Egyptian Sacred Science

A Reappraisal
By

Wesley Muhammad, PhD 2012

Table of Contents

Kemet and Mecca: Two African Holy Lands

I. All in the Family II. Fruits of the Same Tree

1-5

Atum/Adam: Black God of Maat and Islam

I. Atum = Adam II. Atum: The One Eternal God III. Atum: The Black Creator-God of Kemet IV. Atum in the Hebrew Bible IV.1. Adam: The Black Body of God V. Adam/Atum in the Qurn

6-25

The Kaba and the Black God of Kemet

I. Cognate Religions I.1. Ancient Egyptian Ontology

26-30

His Throne is Ever on the Water

I. The Throne of Allah II. Gods Throne on the Waters II.1. Gods Aquatic Body II.2. Yahweh-Elohim (Allah): The Aquatic Body in Biblical Tradition III. The Qurn and its Ancient Near Eastern Context/Subtext

32-53

Kemet and Mecca: Two African Holy Lands

Kemites (i.e. ancient Egyptians) and Arabian Semites are kith and kin

I.

All in the Family

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said:

We, the tribe of Shabazz, says Allah (God), were the first to discover the best part of our planet to live on. The rich Nile Valley of Egypt and the present seat of the Holy City, Mecca, Arabia.

This suggests that Meccan and Egyptian civilization and religious culture originated with different branches of the same ethnic-cultural family. They would be cognate civilizations and cultures: related by blood and descendent from a common ancestor. The ethnographic, linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence confirms this. Grafton Elliot Smith, Australian anatomist and Egyptologist, was the first chair of anatomy at the Cairo School of Medicine. He authored the pioneering Egyptological work, The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization (1923). In an important article in 1909 on the ethnography of Egypt Smith wrote:
it seems probable that the substratum of the whole population of North Africa and Arabia from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf if not further east was originally one racial stock, which, long before the earliest predynastic period in Egypt, had become specialized in physical characteristics and in culture in

the various parts of its wide domain, and developed into the Berber, the Egyptian, the Ethiopian Hamitic and the Arabs populations.1

Smith was still convinced of the ethnic and cultural relatedness of ancient Egyptians and ancient Arabians in 1923 when he published The Ancient Egyptians:
The balance of probability is strongly in favour of the view that the Arabs and the Proto-Egyptians were sprung from one and the same stock, the two divisions of which living in the territories separated by the Red Sea, had become definitely specialized in structure, in customs and beliefs, long before the dawn of the period known as Predynastic in Egyptthe linguistic evidenceaccording to many scholars, points to a similar conclusion.2

That the Egyptian/Kemetic and Arabian peoples are distinct variations of a common cultural substratum is indicated as well by the anthropological evidence. As Dana Reynods (Marniche) records in an important article,
Ancient Arabia was occupied by a people far different in appearance than most modern-day occupants. These were a people who once occupied Egypt, who were affiliated with the East African stocks, and who now speak the Hamitic or Semitic languagesIn the days of Mohammed and the Roman colonization of Palestine, North Arabia and Africa, the term Arab was much more than a nationality. It specifically referred to peoples whose appearance, customs and language were the same as the nomadic peoples on the African side of the Red SeaThe evidence of linguistics, archaeology, physical remains and ethnohistory support the observations and descriptions we find in the histories of the Greeks and Romans and in later Iranian documents about nomadic Arabians of the early era. The Arabs were the direct progeny and kinsmen of the dark-brown, gracile and kinky haired Ethiopic peoples that first spread over the desert areas of Nubia and Egypt early Greeks and Romans did not usually distinguish ethnically between the people called the Saracens and the inhabitants of southern Arabia (the Yemen) which was called India Minor or Little India in those days, nor southern Arabians from the inhabitants of the Horn of Africa. What differences there were between them were more cultural and environmental than anything else. Strabo, around the 1 st century B.C., Philostratus and other writers, speak of the area east of the Nile in Africa as Arabia and the people are persistently and indiscriminately and sometimes simultaneously referred to as either Arabs, Indians or Ethiopiansit is clear from the ancient writings on the Arabs that the peoples of the Arabian peninsula and the nonimmigrant, indigenous nomads of the Horn were considered ethnically one and the same and thought to have originated in areas near the cataracts of the Nile.3

So too does the linguistic evidence bear out the fact of the cultural and ethnic relatedness of ancient Arabians and ancient Egyptians. Prof Nicholas Faraclas, linguist from the University of Puerto Rico, explain:

G. Elliot Smith, The People of Egypt, The Cairo Scientific Journal 3 (1909): 51-63. G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization (1923) 101-102. 3 Dana Reynolds (Marniche), The African Heritage & Ethnohistory of the Moors, in Ivan van Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992) 99, 100, 105-106.
1 2

the origins of the Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylon, Assyrian, and Arabic languages (trace) back to a central African homelandmany of the speakers of the languages from which all these languages developed may have participated in a black civilization that was driven out of Central Africa by the expanding Sahara Desert some 7,000 years agoWhen the evidenceis synthesized, the following scenario emerges. At the outset of the last Major Wet Spell, the Ancient Egyptian speakers would have made their way north down the Nile, while the Beja speakers would have gone eastward up the Atbara. The Omotic speakers would have headed south on the White Nile, followed and later almost completely displaced by the Cushitic speakers. The Chadic and Berber groups would have gone west into the marshes and swamps of the of the Chad Basin, where they finally divided and went their separate ways, the Berber speakers to the northwest and the Chadic speakers to the southwestFinally, the Semitic group would have followed the Blue Nile to the Ethiopian highlands (where the majority of Semitic languages are found to this day) and would eventually have reached the narrow straits that separate the horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. There is convincing toponymic evidence that the Semitic speakers first crossed over into the Middle East via this route. Traces of different subgroups of Semitic are found all along the eastern and western shores of Arabiaavailable evidence points toward a Middle African origin not only for Afroasiatic as a whole, but also for the Semitic group4

This evidence indicates that Kemites (Egyptians) and (Arabian) Semites are siblings, cousins at the very least. Their ethnic, anthropological, and linguistic relatedness suggest that we should expect their religiocultural heritages to be related in the same way. The evidence does not confirm the popular and oft-repeated claim that Islam derived from Kemetic Maat. Rather, a more reasonable conclusion that the evidence allows is that the remarkable similarities between Maat and (proto-)Islam are due to them both being variant traditions of related African peoples who inhabited opposite sides of the Red Sea and who may have ultimately Indigenous Arab Bedouin derived from the areas around the cataracts of Nile. As Prof Benard Leeman, linguist and historian of Africa reports: Archaeological evidence shows that a common culture did exist on the opposite shores of the Red Sea, ca. 1500-1000 B.C.E.5 It thus should come as no surprise that the religious traditions on both sides of the Red Sea were remarkably similar. The religion of the prehistoric African Semites of Arabia is the
Nicholas Faraclas, They Came Before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the African Roots of Semitic Languages, in Silvia Federici (ed.), Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its Others (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1995) 175-96 5 Bernard Leeman, Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship (Queensland, Australia: Queensland Academic Press, 2005) 176.
4

genetic ancestor of the Islam of Prophet Muhammad and the Black Arabs of Late Antiquity.6 The Islam of Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims was an incarnation or articulation of an ancient African system of spirituality. Maat from Kemet was an earlier and cognate expression, as were the spiritual/religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient India. These are all cognate systems, daughters of the same mother (i.e. African spiritual consciousness) and father (Gods revelatory wisdom). The similarities that exist across all of these above cited religious traditions are to be understood in this context. Islam did not derive from Maat of Kemet; they are both branches from a common spiritual trunk, spiritual fruits from the same African tree. But this African Islam of the Prophet Muhammad7 did not survive much past the first Islamic century. Whites (largely Persians, Byzantines and Turks) converted to Islam and to Arabism, squeezing the original Black Arab founders out politically, militarily, intellectually, and religiously, and in the process they transformed Islam to what would be unrecognizable to the Prophet Muhammad.8 This Aryanization broke Islams connection with its African past and robbed it of its African spiritual core. As Prof Gerald Hawting observes:
One should not imagine that Islam as we know it came fully formed out of Arabia with the Arabs at the time of their conquest of the Middle East and was then accepted or rejected, as the case might be, by the non-Arab peoples. Although many of the details are obscure and often controversial, it seems clear that Islam as we know it is largely a result of the interaction between the Arabs and the peoples they conquered during the first two centuries or so of the Islamic era which began in AD 622. During the Umayyad period, therefore, the spread of Islam and the development of Islam were talking place at the same time. 9

In this writing I hope to give some evidence of the fact that the pre-Aryanized, African Islam is cognate with the African Maat that developed on the opposite side of the Red Sea millennia earlier. As such, the Quran of 7th century CE Arabia and the
religious texts of Egypt are all scriptures and equally important pieces of the puzzle of truth.

On the Black Arabs of early Islam see Wesley Muhammad, Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2009) 7 On whom see especially Wesley Muhammad, Gods Black Prophets: Deconstructing the Myth of the White Muhammad of Arabia and the Jesus of Jerusalem (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2010); Idem. Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed: The De-Arabization of Islam and the Transfiguration of Muhammad in Islamic Tradition, @ http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Muhammad_Article.170121832.pdf; Idem. Prophet Muhammad and the Black Arabs: The Witness of Pre-Modern Chinese Sources, @http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Muhammad_Black_Arabs_China_Site.187112134.p df. 8 See Wesley Muhammad, The Aryanization of Islam, @ http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/07/aryanizationof-islam.html. 9 Gerald Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750 (Routledge, 2000).
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II. Fruits of the Same Tree Baba Rafiq Bilal (d. November 28, 2008) and Thomas Goodwin's 1987 publication, Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam: The Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt as revealed in Al-Islam, was groundbreaking. Professor Wade Nobles, who wrote the forward to the book, called the work a thoroughly supported bridge between Islam and the Ancient Kemetic understanding of the most Holy of Holies. Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam was certainly a trailblazer not unlike Dr Yosef Ben Yochannans, The African Origin of the Major Western Religions. According to Bilal and Goodwins research, a serious study of the ancient religion of Egypt and the religion of al-Islam reveals the two to actually be different expressions of the same truths.10 The study of these two traditions convinced Bilal and Goodwin that:
Almighty presented essentially the same truths to the pre-historic Egyptians who built the fabulous civilization upon the principles of the Sacred Revelation, as He presented thousands of years later to Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah in the Holy Quran. Holy Quran is the purification and refinement of this ancient system of knowledge. The truth from God is one truth. In order to convey the body of knowledge which they received, the ancient Egyptians developed the most elaborate educational system in the history of man. Prophet Muhammad, the unlettered Prophet (the Umi Prophet) received and transmitted the same body of knowledge through revelation many thousands of years later 11

Bilal and Goodwin set out to document the nexus between the Quranic lexicon and historiography and Kemetic Sacred Science, arguing that:
Within the pages of the Holy Quran, wrapped in the ancient Arabic language are preserved the following aspects of Egyptian history and sacred science (among others): 1: Concept of God, Nature and Knowledge 2: Egyptian sacred measurements [etc.] 12

I fully concur with Bilal and Goodwin. A close examination of the religious literature of ancient Egypt and Qurnic/Islamic tradition confirms that the two traditions (Kemetic and Islamic) share a basic understanding of God. This concurrence of Kemetic and Islamic theology goes a long way in demonstrating that Maat and Islam are cognate traditions and spring from the same African Tree of Spirituality.

10

Rafiq Bilal and Thomas Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam: The Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt as revealed in Al-Islam (n.p.: n.p., 1987)147. 11 Bilal and Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science, 8. 12 Bilal and Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science, 8.

Atum/Adam: Black God of Maat and Islam

Bismillh ir-ramn nir-ram Qul: huwa llhu had Allhu -amad Lam yalid wa-lam yulad Wa-lam yakun lahu kufuan had In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful 1 Say: He Allah is One 2 Allah is the Eternal (al-amad) 3 He begets not, nor is He begotten 4 And none is equal to Him. Srat al-Ikhls [112] Atum=Adam Bilal and Goodwin write:
The Holy Quran specifies and repeats that divine prophecy extends from Adam to Muhammad. Therefore, the first in the line of Osirian-Horian figures was Adam himself. The original name for Adam was (the ancient Egyptian) Tem, or Atem, later Atum. Tem in Egyptian sacred science is the first solar hero, who evolved into Horus, not the first physical man, as taught in Judaeo-Christian mythology. Quranic revelation is consistent with the universal principle of Tem found in ancient Egypt. 13

I.

This is an important, though admittedly stunning confession by our Muslim brother Rafiq Bilal, but it is right on: The Quranic Adam is no doubt the Egyptian Atum. Bilal and Goodwin correctly point out later:

13

Bilal and Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science, 95.

The ancient Egyptian legend of Tem and Tempt (i.e. Tems female compliment) is the prototype of the mythology of Adam and Eve in the garden.

This is as true in relation to the Quran as it is in relation to the Hebrew Bible. Regarding the latter Dr. Charles Finch pointed out:
The root of ATM is TM (TEM/TUM) which has several meanings, among them people and completion (Adam represented the completion of Gods work on the 6th day). Atum is no less the COMPLETE OR PERFECT DIVINE MAN. A cognate root of TEM is DEM and this means to name (Adam was the namer of all the animals). Thus, the most elementary and indisputable etymological analysis demonstrates that ALL THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE EGYPTIAN DEITY ATUM ARE EMBRACED IN THE HEBREW ADAM.14

That there are the same lexical and mythological connections with the Qurans Adam was equally pointed out by Bilal and Goodwin:
Adam was the first to be taught the names of all thingsThe word-name Tem means to be complete, to make an end of. He was known as the Sun-god (principle) which brought the day to an end, i.e. as the evening or night sun. The Arabic word (with the same letters) is tamma which means to become completed, finished done; to came to an end, be or become terminated.15

But the parallels between the Egyptian Atum and the Biblical/Quranic Adam go much deeper than this and the implications for understanding the Quran are profound. To truly appreciate this fact, we must understand just who Atum is. II. Atum: The One Eternal God
Qul: huwa llhu had Say: He Allah (Atum) is One

Like many other readers of Egyptian religious literature Bilal and Goodwin were convinced that the ancient Egyptians were monotheists, believers in one Supreme God, rather than polytheists, worshipers of an indiscriminant assortment of many gods.
An examination of the earliest religious writings known to man, indicates that the original concept of monotheism was the Egyptian Neter of Neter or Great Principle or Great GodIn the earliest of texts, the archaic Egyptians give tribute to the Great God from which all creation emanated.

They say further:

In the principle (neter) of Amon, the hidden, we have an important aspect of monotheism which is retained inal-Islam, the unseeable, non-depictable character of the Almighty, The validity of the principle is further illustrated by the name Amen in Christian, Jewish and Islamic prayers. At the end of each prayer, we pronounce the name of this principle when we say: Amen.

14 15

Charles Finch, Echoes of the Old Darkland (Decatur, Georgia: Khenti, Inc., 1992) 144. Bilal and Goodwin, Egyptian Sacred Science, 95.

While this later claim is to a certain extant true, it must be severely qualified. Amun is just another name for Atum. As Albert Churchward confirms:
Amenwas another name for AtumIn the hymns to Atem-Ra he is adored as one and the same as Atum, which shows that Amen is a later name for Atum; and he is represented as the hidden god of Amenta, or the secret earth.16

Atum was always depicted as an anthropomorphic deity, i.e. a god with a human (anthropos) form (morphe). Yet Atum, in his guise as Amun, was worshipped as the eternal God.
Amen is the one god who is always depicted in human formAmenwas the only deity in all Egypt who was expressly worshipped by the title of Ankhu, the ever-living one eternal God.17

Atum, Creator God of Kemet

Atum is thus the ever living one God of ancient Egypt. Allhu -amad Allah is the Eternal Churchward notes:
Atum-Ra declares that he is the One God, the one just or righteous God, the one living GodHe is Unicus, the sole and only one (Rit., Chaps. 2, 17) beside whom there is none other At the same time we must not forget that all of these different names of gods (in Egypt) were simply the attributes of the One God. In the 17th chapter of the (Egyptian) Ritual it says: His names together compose the cycle of the godsIn the 17th chapter of The Book of the Dead it is said: I am the Great God-self created, that is to say, who made his names - the company of the gods of God.18

16 17

Churchward, Origin and Evolution, 254. Churchward, Origin and Evolution, 255. 18 Churchward, Signs and Symbols, 62.

III. Atum: The Black Creator-God of Kemet In the ancient city of Annu (Heliopolis), Atum was incorporated into the local divine triad: Khepri, Ra and Atum.19 These were not viewed as separate deities but as transformations (from the Egyptian word kheper, to come into being; to transform) of the singular solar deity.20 Though Atums name closes this triad, he actually opens the Egyptian Myth of Creation. Atum, whose name means the All, was conceived both as the totality of being before the creation set in motion,21 the sum of all matter,22 as well as the internal, unconscious force, that became conscious of itself then manifested itself of its own will.23 In other words, Atum was the attribute given both to the dark, aquatic primordial matter elsewhere called Nun and the luminous force that resided hidden and unconscious within this matter. 24 At a certain point divine unconsciousness turned into divine consciousness and the divine luminosity concentrated itself into an atom, symbolized by the luminous egg within the dark ocean.25 Compelled by his own will, the luminous aspect of Atum emerged self propelled out of the
19

J. Gwyn Griffiths, Triune Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, Zeitschrift fr gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 100 (1973): 28-32; Pascal Vernus, The Gods of Ancient Egypt (London and New York: Tauris Parke Books, 1998) 45; David, Religion and Magic, 58. 20 Franoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004) 23: Despite this tripartitionhe was one. 21 Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 25. 22 Quirke, Cult of Ra, 25. 23 Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 47. 24 On the dark primordial matter and divine luminosity within see Helmer Ringgren, Light and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Religion, in Liber amicorum. Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C.J. Bleeker. Published on the Occasion of his Retirement from the Chair of the History of Religions and the phenomenology of Religion at the University of Amsterdam Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969: 140-150; Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 45-46; James P. Allen, The Cosmology of the Pyramid Texts. In Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (New Haven: Yale Egyptological Series, 1989): 1-28. 25 See E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). Egyptian Text Transliterated and Translated (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1967) xcviii, who quotes: there was in the beginning neither heaven nor earth, and nothing existed except a boundless primeval mass of water which was shrouded in darkness and which contained within itself the germs or beginnings, male and female, of everything which was to be in the future world. The divine primeval spirit which formed an essential part of the primeval matter felt within itself the desire to begin the work of creation, and its word woke to life the world, the form and shape of which it had already depicted to itself. The first act of creation began with the formation of an egg out of the primeval water, from which broke forth R, the immediate cause of all life upon earth. On the cosmogonic egg in Egyptian tradition see further: Ringgren, Light and Darkness, 141; Orly Goldwasser, Itn the Golden Egg (CT IV 292b-c [B9Ca]), in Essays on Ancient Egypt in honour of Herman te Velde (Groningen: Styx, 1997): 79-84; Clifford, Creation Accounts, 106, 112; R.T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1959) 56. On the cosmogonic egg see further Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths revised edition (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1995), Chapter Eight (Germs and Eggs); ER 5:36-7 s.v. Egg by Venetia Newall; idem, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971) Chapter One; Anna-Britta Hellbom, The Creation Egg, Ethnos 1 (1963): 63-105; H.J. Sheppard, Egg Symbolism in Alchemy, Ambix 6 (August, 1958): 140-148; Philip Freund, Myths of Creation (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc, 1965), Chapter Five; Martti Haavio, Vinminen: Eternal Sage (Helsinki, 1952) 45-63; On the cosmic egg as prima materia see also C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (2nd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) 202. On the golden cosmogonic egg and the primordial atom see Freund, Myths of Creation, Chapter 15.

dark, aquatic matter. This initial, luminous, self-emergent stage of the deitys evolution is personified in the god Khepri, represented symbolically/hieroglyphically as a scarab beetle. The scarab beetles apparently spontaneous emergence out of a ball of dung symbolized the creator-gods self-creation out of the primordial matter that is, the self-formation of his own luminous anthropomorphic body.26 With this luminous human form in all its irradiant glory the creator-god is called Ra. The Ra stage in this divine evolution is represented by the midday sun at its greatest strength. Atum-Ra was a self-created Creator god - he created his own form:
O [Atum-]Re who gave birth to righteousness, sovereign who created all this, who built his limbs, who modeled his body, who created himself, who gave birth to himself.27 I (Atum) created my body in my glory; I am he who made Myself; I formed Myself according to my will and according to my heart.28

Ra, Midday Sun God

As J. Zandee notes:
Atum is complete as an androgynous god. He unites within himself masculinity and femininity. He possesses all conditions to bring forth the all out of him. He was a Monad and made himself millions of creatures which he contained potentially in himself. He was the one who came into being of himself (hpr ds.f), who was the creator of his own existence, the causa sui [cause of itself].29

It should be pointed out here that as the eternal, self-evolved deity Atum was unbegotten, in contrast to later generations of Gods (neteru) who were; and as an androgynous male being Atum also was understood to beget not. As William P. Brown notes: Unlike the theogonic pairs in Mesopotamian creation, Atum is a single parent, like Israels God YHWH.30 Atum did not beget the derivative deities by copulating with a goddess as will later become the norm with these deities. Rather, he spit out the first generation of gods.

26

George Hart, A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) 108-110 s.v. Khepri. See further J. Zandee, The Birth-Giving Creator-God in Ancient Egypt, in Alan B. Lloyd (ed.), Studies in Pharaonic Religion and Society, in Honour of J. Gwyn Griffiths London: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1992: 168-185; Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 47-49. 27 From Theb. Tomb 157. 28 From Hieratic Coffin Text 714. 29 Zandee, Birth-Giving Creator-God, 49. 30 William P. Brown,The Seven Pillars of Creation (2010).

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O Atum-Kheprer, you became high on the height, you rose up as the bnbn-stone in the Mansion of the bnbird in On, you SPAT OUT (ishish) Shu, you SPIT OUT (tfnt) Tefnut, and you set your arms about them as the arms of a ka-symbol, that your essence might be in them...31

Lam yalid wa-lam yulad He begets not, nor is He begotten Ra is then said to have entered back into the primordial waters (which are now personified as the cow goddess Nut/Hathor/Meheturet32) and he assumed from them a black body: he is now the black, anthropomorphic god Atum (again).33 Atum of the triad is Ra himself, incarnate in a black body made from the primordial waters. When Ra enters the dark, aquatic Duat or Underworld, he is actually assuming the dark form of Atum who is therefore called Auf-Ra, the flesh of Ra. 34 In later myth this black aquatic body of Atum-Ra is personified in the black deity Osiris, whose black body itself is represented by the black bull Apis, the personification of the primordial waters. The myth of Ra joining Osiris in the Duat or Underworld is actually a picturesque way of presenting Ras incarnation in the black body, personified in Osiris, ruler of the Duat. The Duat represents the primordial waters and is explicitly identified with the black body of Osiris.35 Moustafa Gadalla is correct: Ra is the living neter who descends into death to become Ausar the neter of the dead.36 But Ausar/Osiris is only the black body assumed by Ra in the Duat. As Professors John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa inform us:

31 32

Utterance 600 of the Pyramid Texts as translated by R.O. Faulkner. On Hathor/ Meheturet as universal cow-goddess and primordial ocean see Hart, Dictionary, 76 s.v. Hathor. Vernus, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 79. 33 On Ra re-entering the primordial waters and becoming Atum (again) see Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 27, 45-46; Vernus, Gods of Ancient Egypt, 45. On Ra darkening and transforming into Atum see See Ringgren, Light and Darkness, 150; Karl W.Luckert, Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire. Theological and Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991) 73. On Atum as a black god see Jules Taylor, The Black Image in Egyptian Art, Journal of African Civilization 1 (April, 1979) 29-38. 34 See Quirke, Cult of Ra, 48; Ions, Egyptian Mythology, 42-43; Alexandre Piankoff, and N. Rambova. The Tomb of Ramesses VI: Texts. (Bollingen Series XL; New York: Pantheon Books, 1954) 36-37. 35 See: Allen, Cosmology, 21; Hans-Peter Hasenfratz, Patterns of Creation in Ancient Egypt, in Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman (edd.), Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition (JSOTSup 319; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 176; Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, translated from the German by David Lorton (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press, 2001) 41; idem, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, translated from the German by David Lorton (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005) 188; Clark, Myth and Symbol, 158; Martin Lev and Carol Ring, Journey of the Night Sun, Parabola 8 (1983): 14-18; Terence DuQuesne, Re in the Darkness, Discussions in Egyptology 26 (1993): 96-105; Albert Churchwar d, Signs & Symbols of Primordial Man: The Evolution of Religious Doctrines from the Eschatology of the Ancient Egyptians (Brooklyn: A&B Publishers Group, 1994, reprint ) 63-66, 274-6, 322. 36 Moustafa Gadalla, Egyptian Cosmology: The Animated Universe (Greensboro, N.C.: Tehuti Research Foundation, 2001) 42.

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According to the Book of Amduat, in the fifth hour of the night, the sun god plunged into the primordial waters, out of which creation originally arose37the sun god absorbed the chaotic power of the primordial waters, which engulfed the remnants-flesh-of the once virile solar god.38

And as Albert Churchward had already saw:

Osiris is a figure of inanimate nature, personalized as the mummy with a human form and face, whilst being also an image of matter as the physical body of the god.39

The black bull (k km) of Osiris, Apis, personified the waters of the Nile which was regarded as a type of Nun, the dark, primeval watery mass out of which creation sprang.40 The Egyptian Atum-Ra is thus a duality, the Coniunctio oppositorum: in the Pyramid Texts he is both Wbn-wrr, the Great One who shines forth, as well as Father Atum who is in Darkness.41 This duality is illustrated further by the hieroglyph for flood: it is a heron bird perched on a stick, an allusion to the common sight during the summer high Nile of birds clinging to wood. The heron is the sign of the Benu bird, the primeval bird of Atum-Ra.42 The Benu embodies the radiance emanating from the sun.43 This hieroglyph is consistent with other Egyptian sources which affirm that the Benu bird presides over the flood. We thus have symbolized in this hieroglyph the conjunction of Lady Taperet praying to Atum. Dynasty the solar element and the aquatic element.44 Atum is the 21-25. Louvre E 52-N3663 conjunction between the solar (Ra) and the aquatic

37

Erik Hornung, Das Amduat, die Schrift des verborgenen Raumes, Teil II: bersetzung und kommentar (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963) 104-108. 38 John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa, Tutankhamuns Armies: Battle and Conquest during Ancient Egypts Late 18th Dynasty (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007) 22-23. 39 Albert Churchward, The Origin and Evolution of Religion (1924; Bensenville, Il: Lushena Books, Inc., 2003) 57. 40 See mile Chassinat, La Mise a Mort Rituelle DApis, Recueil de travaux relatifs a la philology et a larcheologie egyptiennes et assyriennes 38 [1916] 33-60; E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). Egyptian Text Transliterated and Translated [New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1967] cxxiii. 41 Ringgren, Light and Darkness, 142. 42 Hart, Dictionary, 57-58 s.v. Benu. 43 Quirke, Cult of Ra, 28. 44 Quirke, Cult of Ra, 29-30.

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(primordial waters/Osiris). This conjunction of the solar luminosity (Ra) and the black, aquatic element (Osiris) produced the distinctive blue color of the great Gods. IV. Atum in the Hebrew Bible In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Claus Westermann called our attention to an important fact, the recognition of which is critical to a proper understanding of the Genesis creation account and, indeed, the theology behind it.
The first chapter of Genesis had its origin in the course of a history of tradition of which the written text of P (i.e. the Priestly author of Genesis) is the last stage, and which stretches back beyond and outside Israel in a long and many-branched oral pre-history.45

The origin of the Genesis 1 creation narrative does indeed lie outside of Israel, and there can be no doubt as to its general provenance: That some form or other of the ancient NearEastern myth of creation lies behind the Priestly account cannot be denied.46 The specific provenance, however, has been debated. Since the publication of the Babylonian creation account, Enma el, in 1876 by George Smith the similarities between the Babylonian and Hebrew narratives have been often noted.47 The Babylonian Exile (587-538 BCE), during which large numbers of Jewish priests and others were exiled in Babylon, is surely a proper context in which to understand these similarities. But Israel also, earlier and for a longer period of time, were in Egypt. Moses was an Egyptian (Exod. 2:19) learned in all the wisdom of Egypt (Act 7:22). Indeed, while Babylonian influence is discernable in the structure of Genesis 1, some of the vocabulary and some of their theological content, scholars have pointed out that this creation account that was edited during the Exile itself originally derives from the much older Hebrew contact with Egyptian cosmogonic tradition.48
When the template of ancient Egyptian creation traditions is held up against the Genesis I creation account there is a quite remarkable correspondence. The conclusion is stark and compelling: ancient Egypt provided the foundation tradition which was shaped and handed down by successive priestly generationsAncient Egypt proves to be the single, coherent and rich source of the priestly creation tradition. The Nile civilization provides not simply a possible context for odd verses, but again and again accounts for the details of the Genesis I creation narrative and is the key to its common thread. 49

45 46

Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 83. Islwyn Blythin, A Note on Genesis 12, VT 12 (1962): 120 [art.=120-121]. See also Whitley, Patterns of Creation, 36; Arvid S. Kapelrud, The Mythological Features in Genesis Chapter 1 and the Authors Intention, VT 24 (1974): 179. Susan Niditch (Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns of Creation [SPSH 6; Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1985] 18) noted also that There is no doubt a shared Near Eastern notion of the way the cosmos order unfolded, and Gen. 1 reflects that shared notion. 47 See e.g. A. Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). 48 Rikki E. Watts (On the Edge of the Millennium: Making Sense of Genesis 1, in Hans Boersma [ed.]. Living in the LambLight: Christianity and Contemporary Challenges to the Gospel [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2001] 138-9 [art.=129-51]) argues that in the light of the time Israel spent in Egypt, the dominant background against which Genesis 1 is read and heard should be the Egyptian creation accounts. 49 James E. Atwell, An Egyptian Source for Genesis I, JTS 51 (2000): 466-7 [art.=441-77].

13

The first chapter of Genesis is in fact a Hebrew adaptation of an ancient Egyptian cosmogony with heavy Babylonian influence.50 As such, the Egyptian original casts an illuminating light on Genesis 1. As Abraham Yahuda noted:
the Egyptian backgroundthrows full light on the most important and conspicuous points of creation (in Genesis), and explains many features which have always puzzled the interpreters and theologians. In some instances it gives us the key to the solution of problems which were considered insoluble. 51

Therefore, in order to make since of the enigmatic priestly creation account, we must avail ourselves to not only the biblical priestly materials in the Torah and the Hebrew Bible generally, but also to the Egyptian and Babylonian originals.52 IV.1. Adam: The Black Body of God The creation of Adam on Day Six of the Genesis creation narrative (cosmogony) was the crown of Gods creative activity.
And God said: Let us make Adam/man as our image ( elem), according to our likeness ( dmt)(Gen. 1:26)53

Adam was thus made to be the image of God, , elem lhm. The Hebrew elem means primarily statue54 and elem lhm is a cognate of the Akkadian alam ili/ilni, the common Mesopotamian term for god-statues.55 Scholars have now seen that this terminological congruence contains conceptual congruence as well: the elem (image) of Genesis is the

50

Herman Gunkel (Influence of Babylonian, 44) wrote that Gen. 1 is merely the Judaic reworking of much older traditional material that originally must have been considerably more mythological in nature, and according to W.F. Albright (Contributions, 365) P effaced the original outlines of the Egypto-Phoenician cosmogonic narrative that he received. 51 Abraham Shalom Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible (London: William Heineman Ltd., 1934), 136. 52 This is not to deny the new and idiosyncratic ways in which Israel may have received, interpreted and utilized these ancient traditions. It is to say, however, that any attempt to interpret this text must consider all available source materials that bear on the text, the Egyptian materials included. 53 The beth in balmn, usually translated in our image is to be read as beth essentiae, as our image (elem). See TLOT 3:1082 s.v. ,by Wildberger; TDOT 12:394 s.v. by Stendebach; D.J.A. Clines, The Image of God in Man, TynBul 19 (1968): 76-80. On beth essentiae see J.H. Charlesworth, The Beth Essentiae And the Permissive Meaning of the Hiphil (Aphel), in H.W. Attridge, J.J. Collins and T.H. Tobin (edd.), Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins, Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990) 67-78; Cyrus H. Gordon, In of Predication or Equivalence, JBL 100 (1981) 612-613; Lawrence N. Manross, Bth Essentiae, JBL 73 (1954): 238-9. On the other hand, we understand the in kidmthn as kaph of the norm (according to our likeness). See now W. Randall Garr, In His Own Image and Likeness: Humanity, Divinity, and Monotheism (Leiden: Brill, 2003) Chapter Six. 54 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (hereafter HALOT) (5vols.; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994-) 3:1028-29, s.v. . 55 The Assyrian Dictionary (hereafter CAD; Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1962) 16: 78b80a, 84b-85a, s.v. almu; E. Douglas Van Buren, The alm in Mesopotamian Art and Religion, Orientalia 5 (1936): 65-92.

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Mesopotamian almu (cult-image), thus Adam was created to be the living statue of the deity, the deitys very presence on earth.56
Gen 1:26can only be understood against the background of an ancient Yahweh statueHere the terms lm and dmwt are used as synonyms denoting statue. Humans are thus created to be the living statues of the deity. The ritual of vivifying the cult statue was transferred to man in Genesis 2. There was no further need of a divine image becausehumans represented Yahweh, as a statue would have done57

The Mesopotamian almu, like the Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern cult-image generally, was distinguished by its ambivalent godnot god identity: while the statue is distinguished from the god whom it represents, it is also identified with and treated as the god itself.58 The reason is that the ancient Near Eastern cult statue was not only a representative replica of the god; it was also the dwelling place of that gods essence/spirit (ba).59 As Zainab Bahrani puts it: (The statue) was not considered to resemble an original reality that was present elsewhere but to contain that reality in itself.60 It signified, according to Johannes
56

See above; HALOT 3:1028-1029; DDD s.v. Image, by A. Livingstone, 448-450; Samuel E. Loewenstamm, Beloved is Man in that he was created in the Image, in idem, Comparative Studies in Biblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures (AOAT, 204; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980) 48-50. 57 Herbert Niehr, In Search of Yahwehs Cult Statute in the First Temple, in The Image and the Book, 93-94. See also S. Dean McBride Jr., Divine Protocol: Genesis 1:1-2:3 as Prologue to the Pentateuch, in W.P. Brown and S.Dean McBride (edd.), God Who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000) 16: Adamic beings are animate iconsThe peculiar purpose for their creation is theophanic: to represent or mediate the sovereign presence of deity within the central nave of the cosmic temple, just as cult-images were supposed to do in conventional sanctuaries; Andreas Schle, Made in the >Image of God<: The Concepts of Divine Images in Gen 1-3, ZAW 117 (2005): 1-20; Ulrich Mauser, God in Human Form, Ex Auditu 16 (2000): 81-100 (90-93; Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis, The Worship of Divine Humanity as Gods Image and the Worship of Jesus, in Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism, 113-128, esp. 120-128;; John Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 53-60. See also idem, Will the Real elem lhm Please Stand Up? The Image of God in the Book of Ezekiel, SBL 1998 Seminar Papers, 55-85; idem, Ezekiels Anthropology and its Ethical Implications, in Odell and Strong, Book of Ezekiel, 119-141; Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, eds. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, trs. Mark E. Biddle (3vols.; Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc, 1997; hereafter TLOT) 3:1080-82 s.v. ,by H. Wilderger; Garrett Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination (San Francisco, etc.: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989) 91-97; Edward Mason Curtis, Man as the Image of God in Genesis in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Parallels (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1984); idem, Image of God (OT), in ABD 3:289-91. 58 On this godnot god identity of the idol see especially T. Jacobsen, The Graven Image, in P.D. Miller Jr., P.D. Hanson and S.D. McBride (edd.), Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 15-32, esp. 16-20; Michael B. Dick, The Relationship between the Cult Image and the Deity in Mesopotamia, in Ji Proseck (ed.), Intellectual Life of the ancient Near East: Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre assyriologique international, Prague, July 1-5, 1996 (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998) 11-16. On the treatment of idols see Irene J. Winter, Idols of the King: Royal Images as Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia, Journal of Ritual Studies 6 (Winter 1992):13-42; Curtis, Man as the Image of God, 103-106. On the ANE cult of divine images see further Neal H. Walls (ed.) Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East (American Schools of Oriental Research Books Series 10; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2005); Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Michael B. Dick (ed.), Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999). 59 K.H. Bernhardt, Gott und Bild. Ein Beitrag zur Begrndung und Deutung des Bildererbotes im Alten Testament (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1956) 17-68; David Lorton, The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt, in Born in Heaven, 123-210, esp. 179-184; Curtis, Man as the Image of God, 97-102. 60 Bahrani, Graven Image, 127.

15

Hehn, the living incarnation of the represented person,61 i.e. the deity. The almu or cult statue was the very body of the god on earth, in which his/her divine spirit/essence incarnated. Stendebach: The cult statue of a god is the actual body in which that deity dwells.62 According to Thorkild Jacobs, the statue was the deitys outer form, the external habitation63 and Assmann notes that the basic Egyptian concept is The statue is not the image of the body, but the body itself (emphasis original).64 Andreas Schle puts it succinctly:
It is through an image that a god/goddess is present in the created world and executes his/her powers in history and natureThe cultic image is in fact the medium of manifest divine presence and action in the world and as such part of the divine person. It is, to put it pointedly, >god on earth<The image wasthat side of the gods person through which he entered the sphere of created lifethe bodily appearance of a god, the very mediumthrough which he can be addressed by prayer, worship and sacrifice.65

In the ancient Near Eastern cult of images the statue was incarnated by the essence or spirit (Ba) of the deity only after the successful completion of a series of rituals performed on/with the cult image. These are the socalled pit p (Opening-of-the-mouth) and ms p (Washing-of-the-mouth) rituals whose objective was to transform the lifeless statue into the living god (or king).66 It is now widely recognized that the idea behind these rituals underlie the imagery of Gen. 2:7b: then the LORD GOD formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (New Oxford Annotated Bible).67 As Abraham Shalom Yahuda saw:

Ay performing the Opening of the Mouth ritual on the mummified Tutankhamun

61

Johannes Hehn, Zum Terminus Bild Gottes, in G. Weil (ed.), Festschrift Eduard Sachau (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1915) 36. 62 Stendebach, TDOT 12:389 sv. . 63 Thorkild Jacobs, The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven: Yake University Press, 1967) 14. 64 Assmann, The Search for God, 46. See also Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 135: These images may be the bodies of the gods into which they enter. 65 Schle, Made in the >Image of God<, 5-6, 12. 66 See Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, The Mesopotamian God Image, From Womb to Tomb, JAOS 123 (2003): 147-157; Christopher Walker and Michael B. Dick, The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Mesopotamian ms p Ritual, in Born in Heaven, 55-121. On the Egyptian ritual v. Lorton, The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,153-158. 67 Schle, Made in the >Image of God<, 11-14; Edward L. Greenstein, Gods Golem: The Creation of the Human in Genesis 2, in Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman (edd.), Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition (JSOT Supplement Series 319; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 219-239 (224-229); James K. Hoffmeier, Some Thoughts on Genesis 1 & 2 and Egyptian Cosmogony, JANES 15 (1983): 46-48; ABD 3:390 s.v. Image of God (OT) by Curtis; Walter Wifall, The Breath of His Nostrils: Gen 2:7b, CBQ 36 (1974): 237-240; Cyrus Gordon, Khnum and El, in Sarah Israelit-Groll (ed.), Egyptological Studies (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1982): 202-214 (204-5); Abraham Shalom Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible (London: William Heineman Ltd., 1934) 152. S.G.F. Brandon, In the beginning: The Hebrew Story of the Creation in its Contemporary Setting, History Today 11 (1961): 380-387 (384). See also Gregory Yuri Glazov, The Bridling of the Tongue and the Opening of the Mouth in Biblical Prophecy

16

In Gen. 27 the process of animating the body of Adam is described by the words: And the Lordbreathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. This passage is in every detail in expression and substance typically Egyptian. To begin with, the expression breath of life is the same as the Egyptian tau en ankh. The idea of giving a breath of life into the nostrils is very common in Egyptian. The whole phrase, both in Egyptian and Hebrew, is literally and grammatically identicalThus for instance it is said of the god Ptah that he it is who gives the breath of life to every nose.68

It is important to remind our readers that, according to the Hebrew of Genesis 1:26, Adam was not made in or according to the elem of God, but as the elem.69 This elem was made according to the likeness ( dmt)of Gods own luminous form, called kbd in Israel and Ra in Kemet. This means that the elem or human statue had the shape of Gods own luminous form, but it was made from a different substance: admh (earth: Gen. 2:7), a term which suggests a dark reddish-brown inclining towards black.70 Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition therefore describes the material of Adams body as a dark or black substance.71 The Hebrew opening of the mouth ritual described in Gen. 2:7 indicates that the luminous form incarnated within the elem, viz., Adam, like the Ba incarnates within the Egyptian Ka-statue.72 In Egypt the deity Amun (Atum) is said to be that breath which stays in all things and through which one lives.73 In the Luxor Temple Amun is depicted holding the sign of life (ankh) toward the pharaoh Amen-hotep saying, My beloved son, receive my likeness in thy nose.74 This indicates that the blowing of the breath of life into the nostrils signifies the incarnation of that deitys breath, also called his likeness. And as Walter Wifall noted: The
(JSOT Supplemental Series 311; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 2001). On reading Genesis I and 2 as parts of a (redacted) whole v. Sawyer, Image of God, 64-5. 68 Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible, 152. 69 See above. 70 Cf. the Akkadian cognates adamtu, dark red earth and adamatu B black blood. CAD 1.94; TDOT 1:75-77 s.v. dhm by Maass; ibid, 1:88-90 s.v. adhmh by J.G. Plger; ABD 1.62 s.v. Adam by Howard N. Wallace. 71 Jewish: see e.g. the haggadic tradition according to which Adam was made from dust taken from all four corners of the earth, and this dust was respectively red, black, white and green-red for the blood, black for the bowls, white for the bones and veins, and green for the pale skin. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:55; cf. PRE 11 (Frielander trns., 77). The green here at times substitutes for tekhelet, the dark blue of the high priestly robe. See Gershom Scholem, Colours and Their Symbolism in Jewish Tradition and Mysticism: Part I, Diogenes 108 (1979): 94; Rabbi Alfred Cohen, Introduction, in idem (ed.) Tekhelet: The Renaissance of a Mitzvah (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1996), 3. See also Maimonides who describes the substance of dust and darkness from which Adams body was made. The Guide of the Perplexed, trns. M. Friedlander (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1947) 3.8. Christian: cf. St. Ephrem the Syrians description of the dark mass [of dust] ymwt"; see discussion by Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis 1-11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (Sweden: CWK Gleerup Lund ,1978) 53, 57; Edmund Beck, Iblis und Mensch, Satan und Adam, Mus 89 (1976): 214. Islam: Qur"n 15:28 and parallels: I am going to create man from sounding clay (all), from fetid black mud (ama mann). 72 See below page 73 H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965) 161. 74 Ibid.

17

Egyptian portrait appears to be an obvious parallel to thedescription of God and the man in Gen. 2.75 R.J. Williams also pointed out that the concept of a god placing breath into the nostrils of man is an Egyptianism.76 Thus, the composite narrative of Genesis (Gen. 1-2)77 presents us with a picture strikingly reminiscent of ancient Near Eastern cult tradition: a elem (cult-statue) is made for/by the deity78 from mundane materials79 into which that deity (his breath/likeness, i.e. his luminous form) subsequently enters and dwells.80 This indwelling enlivens the elem, making it god and king.81 Adam, as the elem of God, is himself the very body of God in which the spirit (luminous form) of God incarnated.82 As Wildberger notes:
It cannot be stressed enough that Israelby a daring adaptation of the image theology of the surrounding world, proclaims that a human being is the form in which God himself is present.83

As elem, Adam is not only the earthly body of God, but the black body of God. The Akkadian almu means both image/statue and black, the latter meaning deriving from its verbal form almu, to become dark, to turn black.84 This semantic duality is found also in the Hebrew root lm (lm I: image/statue; lm II: dark, darkness, from lam II: to be dark).85 In an exhaustive philological study in 1972 I.H. Eybers suggested taking the Hebrew elem as el (shadow, dark image) expanded by the enclitic mm (the final m).86 Marshalling an impressive amount of comparative material Eybers concluded:
Taking all the data into consideration the meaning of lm in Gen. 1:26-27 could be that man is a shadowy (and therefore weak) replica and creation of God.87

75 76

The Breath of His Nostrils: Gen. 2:7b, CBQ 36 (1974): 239 [art.=237-24]. R.J. Williams, Some Egyptianisms in the Old Testament, Studies in Honor of John A. Wilsons 70th Birthday (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 35; Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969) 93-4. 77 As arranged by the final redactor. On reading Genesis I and 2 as parts of a (redacted) whole v. Sawyer, Image of God, 64-5. 78 On the ritual attribution of the creation of the cult statute to the deity v. Walker and Dick, Induction; Dick, Relationship, 113-116. 79 See Victor Hurowitz, What Goes In Is What Comes Out Materials for Creating Cult Statues in G. Beckman and T.J. Lewish (edd.), Text and Artifact Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, April 27-29, 1998, Brown Judaic Series, 2006 (in press). My thanks to professor Hurowitz for providing a manuscript copy of this work. 80 On the divine entering the form of the statue v. Winter, Idols of the King, 23; Dick, Relationship, 113-114; Curtis, Man as Image of God, 97-99. 81 On made from dust in Gen. 2 as a biblical metaphor for enthronement v. Walter Brueggemann, From Dust to Kingship, ZAW 84 (1972): 1-18. I. Engell already read Gen 1:26-8 as a description of a divine, enthroned Adam: see Knowledge and Life in the Creation Story, in M. Noth and D. Winton Thomas (edd.), Wisdom in Israel and In The Ancient Near East Presented to Harold Henry Rowley (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955) 112. 82 As McBride puts it (Divine Protocol, 18) Adam is Gods own incarnated image. 83 H. Wildberger, Das Abbild Gottes, Gen 1:26-30, ThZ 21 (1965): 245-59. 84 CAD 16:70,77-85. 85 HALOT, 3:1028-1029 s.v ; TDOT 12:396 s.v. by Niehr. 86 I.H. Eybers, The Root -L in Hebrew Words, JNSL 2 (1972): 23-36 (29-32). See also International Standard Bible Encyclopedia 4vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1979-; hereafter ISBE) 4:440 s.v. Shade; Shadow, by G. Chamberlain. 87 Eybers, The Root -L, 32 n. 2.

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Earlier, Pierre Bordreuil, also noting the etymological relationship between the Hebrew elem and Akkadian almu,88 pointed out the conceptual link between Gen. 1:26-27 and the ancient Near Eastern characterization of the king as both image of a god and as residing in that gods (protective) shadow.89 The philological data is now sufficient for Israeli biblical scholar Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg to note simply: Image-tselem in HebrewAt the heart of that word is the word shadow.90 This too is an Egyptianism: the cult statue in Egypt was also at times described as shut, shadow.

88

The first to propose such as relation seems to have been the Assyrologist Friedrich Delitzsch who described elem as a Babylonian loanword: Prolegomena eines neuen hebrisch-aramischen Wrterbuchs (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1886) 141. On denials of such a relation v. below n. 154. 89 Pierre Bordreuil, A LOmbre DElohim: Le theme de lombre protectrice dans lAncien Orient et ses rapports avec LImago Dei, RHPhR 46 (1996): 368-391. 90 In Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York: Doubleday, 1996) 19. The relation of lm II and el to each other and to Gen.1:26-27 has been disputed. Two relevant issues were actually debated: (1) whether lm II to be/become dark ever existed in Hebrew or Northwest Semitic (NWS) at all and: (2) if so, whether it was in any way related to elem. This discussion often focused on the much disputed term ( Jer. 2:6; Pss. 44:20; 23:4; Job 16:16; 38:17; see discussion in D. Winton Thomas, in the Old Testament, JSS 7 [1962]: 191-200). After Friedrich Delitzschs initial suggestion in 1886 of a elem/almu (black) relation, he was disputed by his father, OT scholar Franz Delitzsch (New Commentary on Genesis [Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1888-89] 1:91. The longest lasting rebuttal came from Theodor Nldeke, first in a review of Friedrich Delitzschs Wrterbuchs (ZDMG 40 (1886): 733-34) and latter in an article devoted to the subject ( und ,ZAW 17 [1897]: 183-187). Nldeke doubted the existence of a Hebrew lm II to be/become dark and derived elem from an Arabic lm meaning to cut off (on the denial of a NWS lm II v. also J.F.A. Sawyer, Review of W.L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament in JSS 17 [1972] 257; D.J.A. Clines, The Etymology of Hebrew elem, JNSL 3 (1973):23-25; Walter L. Michel, LMWT, Deep Darkness or Shadow of Death? BR 29 [1984]: 5-13). But the weakness of this Arabic derivation has now been adequately demonstrated (Bordreuil, A LOmbre DElohim, 368-372; James Barr, The Image of God in the Book of Genesis-A Study of Terminology, BJRL 51 (1968): 18-22; idem, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament [1st ed.; Oxford, 1968; repr. With additions and corrections: Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1987] 375-380; Eybers, The Root -L, 31-32; Clines, Etymology, 19-21) and the existence of a NWS lm II to be/become dark has been affirmed and accepted (Paul Humbert, Etudes sur le recit du paradis et de la chute dans la Genesis (Mmoires de lUniversit de Neuchatel 14, 1940) 156; Baruch Margalit, A Matter of "Life" and "Death": A Study of the Baal-Mot Epic (CTA 4-5-6) [Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980] 72 n. 1; HALOT 3:1028 s.v. ;TDOT 12: 396 s.v. by Niehr; Chaim Cohen, The Meaning of Darkness: A Study in Philological Method, in Michael V. Fox et al (edd.), Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran [Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996] 287-309). James Barr (Comparative Philology, 375) noted in 1987 that by that time the derivation of from a Hebrew root lm to be/become dark had become so completely accepted that some works have ceased to mention that the older tradition of meaning (viz. shadow of death) ever existed. Cf. Michel, LMWT, 5. A connection between lm II and el is probable (Pace Nldeke, und 581 , and Clines, Etymology, 2122) el is thought to derive from the basic form to be/become dark; cf. Ar. ll IV, Eth. salala II, Akk. illn. See TDOT 12:372-73 s.v. ;B. Halper, The Participial Formations of the Geminate Verbs, ZAW 30 (1910): 216. On v. further: The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (1906; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996; hereafter BDB) 853 s.v. III ;HALOT 3:1027 s.v. III ;Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros, ed. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985) 804b s.v. III .On the Ar. ll IV v. E.W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (2 vols.; Cambridge, England : Islamic Texts Society, 1984) 2: 1914 s.v. . On the Akk. illn v. CAD 16: 188 s.v. illn. Comparative philological evidence supports the connection between elem and el: See e.g.: Akk. almu black::image/statue and illu shadow::likeness (in a transferred sense; v. CAD 16:190 s.v. illu); Old South Arabic lm/lm darkness/black::image/statue (see A.F.L. Beeston et al, Sabaic Dictionary (Louvain-la-Neuve: Editions Peeters; Beyrouth: Librairie du Liban, 1982) 143, 172. Thus Sawyer, The Image of God, The Wisdom of Serpents and

19

Adam is therefore both the image and shadow of the Biblical gods luminous form (kbd), his shadow picture, as N.W. Porteous said it, 91 just as the Kemetic god Atum is the black image/form/body of the luminous solar god Ra. Adam, as elem, is thus Gods black body on earth in which Gods Spirit/Glory (kbd=Ba) incarnates, the sanctuary in which he resides, and the place where he is encountered. We thus have a better appreciation for and understanding of Finchs observation quoted above:
The root of ATM is TM (TEM/TUM) which has several meanings, among them people and completion (Adam represented the completion of Gods work on the 6th day). Atum is no less the COMPLETE OR PERFECT DIVINE MAN. A cognate root of TEM is DEM and this means to name (Adam was the namer of all the animals). Thus, the most elementary and indisputable etymological analysis demonstrates that ALL THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE EGYPTIAN DEITY ATUM ARE EMBRACED IN THE HEBREW ADAM.92

V.

Adam/Atum in the Quran

Through the use of vocabulary and concepts deriving from the ancient Near Eastern cult of images, Gen 1:26-27 (and 2:7) presents Adam as the black body of God on earth. The cult statue elem/almu is usually worshipped as the god. This latter point is not explicitly made in Genesis. It is, however, made in the Qur"n. In this regard, Ida J. Glasers work is significant. Glaser has well argued that the Qur"nic account of Adams creation should be read as a comment on and complement to the Bibles account.93 When the Hebrew and Arabic accounts are read together, it becomes apparent that the Qur"nic account (1) fills in gaps in the Biblical account. E.g. who was God talking to in Gen. 1:26, Let US make man? The Qur"n answers: the Exalted Assembly or council of angels. (2) offers explanations to aspects of the Biblical account. E.g. what was the reason the serpent tempted Adam and Eve? Qurn: Because on Adams account he (Ibls) was cast out of Paradise.
the Knowledge of God and Evil, 66; Eybers, The Root -L, 29-32; Barr, The Image of God, 21. Pace most recently Wildberger, TLOT 3:1080, s.v. ;Stendebach, TDOT 12:388, s.v. . 91 IDB II:683 s.v. Image of God. In his discussion of Poimandres in 1935 C. H. Dodd (The Bible and the Greeks [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935] 157-8, n. 1), observing that the Greek terms and used with regard to the divine Anthropos corresponded with the biblical and used in the creation account of Adam (Gen. 1:26-7), noted: certainly there is an old exegetical tradition according to which and in Genesis mean likeness and shadow respectively, corresponding fairly well with the and of Poimandres. Unfortunately, I cannot trace this tradition farther back than the Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide, who died in 1637. Is there any evidence that it was known at a date which would make it possible that the Hermetist was acquainted with this interpretation? We can now answer Dobbs question in the affirmative. 92 Finch, Echoes, 144. 93 Qur"nic Challenges for Genesis, JSOT 75 (1997): 3-19.

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(3) offers corrections to aspects of the Biblical account. E.g. while the Genesis account has Adam and Eve prevaricating after being discovered in the wrong, the Qur"nic account has them repenting immediately. When the Qur"nic account is read as such commentary on the Biblical account an unmistakable observation jumps out at us: the Qur"n does not deny or correct the Genesis Adam-as-elem theology, but confirms it in a most blatant way. Where the Genesis account conspicuously lacks only a description of the cult-statue (Adam-as-elem) receiving the worship that cult-statues normally receive, THE QUR"$NIC ACCOUNT PROVIDES IT. The creation of Adam is retold in some detail in only slightly varying (though noncontradictory) ways in five surahs in the Qur"n (Al-Baqara 2:28-39; Al-A#rf 7:10-25; Al-\ijr 15:26-48; Al-Kahf 18:51-59; h 20:115-123). As Marcia K. Hermansen underlined, each version presents the story of Adams creation in order to convey a distinct point (thus the slight differences in the retelling).94 We will begin with Al-\ijr 15:26-34:
26. Surely We created man of dry ringing clay (all), Of black mud (ama") wrought into shape (masnn) 27. And the Jinn We created previously of flaming fire. 28. And when your Lord said to the angels, See I am creating a man of dry ringing clay, of black mud wrought into shape. 29. When I have shaped him, and breathed My spirit into him, then fall down in prostration before him (fa-qa# lahu sajidn) 30. So the angels prostrated (sajada), all of them 31. Save Ibls; he refused to be among the prostrate. 32. (God) said: O Ibls! What ails thee, that you art not among the prostrate? 33. He answered: I will not bow down (l sujud) before a man whom You have created of dry ringing clay, of black mud wrought into shape. 34. (God) said, Then get out hence, for, surely thou art rejected.

Adam is here described as being made from all, that is dried clay that produces a sound like pottery (cf. 55:14-15) and ama", fermented black mud (see amma to blacken, become black). From these materials Adams body was wrought into shape (masnn). This image of clay recalls the Egyptian motif of god Khnum creating humanity on his potters wheel (see below page 27). But this is not the only Egyptianism in the Islamic narrative. According to the Islamic commentaries, this black body called Adam remained inert and lifeless, hollow like a statue for forty days (or forty years) before Allah blew his spirit into it, enlivening it.
He (Adam) remained forty nights as an inert body, and Ibls used to come to him and kick him, and he (Adam) gave a hollow ring like a clay potThen he (Ibls) used to go in (Adam) through his mouth and come out through his rear, and go in through his rear and come out through his mouth; then (Ibls) said: You are nothing-to the hollow ringWhen God breathed into (Adam) of His spirit, breath came from the
94

Pattern and meaning in the qur"nic Adam narratives, Studies in Religion 17 (1988): 45 [art.=40-52]. See also Torsten Lfstedt, The creation and fall of Adam: A Comparison of the Quranic and Biblical accounts, Swedish Missiological Themes 93 (2005): 453-477. On Adams creation in the Qur"n se also: Angelika Neuwirth, Qur"n, Crisis and Memory: The Qur"nic path towards canonization as reflected in the anthropogonic accounts, in Angelika Neuwirth and Andreas Pflitsch (edd.), Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies. Proceedings of the third Summer Academy of Working Group Modernity and Islam held at the Orient Institute of the German Oriental Society in Beirut (Beirut, 2001)113-52; Kenneth E. Nolin, The Story of Adam, MW 65 (1964): 4-13;

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front of his head, and everything which came to flow from it became flesh and blood. And when the breathing had reached his navel, he looked and marveled at how beautiful was what he saw. 95

Behind this imagery is surely the ancient Near Eastern cult statute enlivened through the ms p and pit p rituals.
When an image (elem/almu) represents a deity, the distinction between representation and referent disappear. A divine image may be completely transformed into its referent through the performance of ritual. Before the ritual, the image is an inanimate objectIn the course of the ritual, the image becomes a god. Like magical figurines, the divine image assumes the identity of its referent. It too is a surrogate, representing the god incarnateThe transformation is effected by ritualWithout this ritual, the statue was only the product of human artisans. But with this ritual, the once-lifeless image becomes an animate entity. Through a collaboration of divine and human creative forces, the ritual transubstantiates the material image and brings it to life. The image is thereby born.96

The only difference here in the Qurn is that the two step process fashion statue and then ritualistically enliven it is a completely divine rather than a collaborative divine-human effort. The divine Breath/Spirit blown into Adams nostrils is the Egyptian Ba incarnating within the Ka-statue, Adam.97 As Wade Nobles explains in his African Psychology:
The BA was the second (of seven divisions) of the psychic nature. It represented the transmission of the breath of life. The ancients believed that there was only one power, which was symbolically represented as THE BREATH, and that this power or breath was transmitted from the ancestors to the descendants. The ancients believed that this power or energy has always existed and will always exist. The Ba was the invisible source, like electricity, of all visible functions. The Ba was in effect the vital principle which represented the essence of all things.98

Just as Gen. 2.7 depicts the transmission of the Ba or divine essence to the statue Adam through the Breath of Life metaphor, so too does the Qurn. This background is confirmed by the fact that after this enlivening of the Adam-statue the angels are ordered to make prostration before Adam. Sajada is what Muslims do when praying to God. It is worship of God: And to Allah makes prostration every living creature that is in the heavens and the earth, and the angels too (16:49). But here Adam is worshipped by the angels, on Gods own orders. Ibls, which name derives from the Greek diabolus Devil, refused to worship
95

Al-abar reports in his commentary (ad Surah 2:30) from Ibn #Abbs. Translation from J. Cooper in The Commentary of the Qur"n by Ab Ja#far Muammad b. Jarr al-abar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 1:212-13. 96 Carr, in His Own Image and Likeness, 142, 143. 97 On the Egyptian notion of Ba and Ka see below pages 27-28. 98 Wade Nobles, African Psychology (Oakland: Black Family Institutions, 1986) 36.

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this black Adam. Why? I (Ibls) am better than he; You (God) have created me from fire, him You have created of clay (7:12). For Iblss pride and disobedience he was cast out of heaven to become Shayn or Satan.99 Prof Gabriel Said Reynolds in his important new book, The Qurn and Its Biblical Subtext (2010) correctly points outs:
References to the prostration of the angels before Adam appear in no less than seven different Sras, suggesting that this is an account of fundamental important to the Qurn.100

Indeed it is of fundamental importance, as it defines not only the nature of Adam but the nature of Allah as well. Reynolds correctly perceived the meaning of this recurrently Qurnic theme: The Qurnic subtext suggests thatGod wasin him (Adam).101 Like the Hebrew narrative, the Qurnic story of Adam is an incarnational narrative, it narrates Gods (Allahs) incarnation within the black statue, Adam. That this is a picture of Allahs incarnation in the body of Adam was explicitly stated by some Muslims whom al-Baghddi (d. 1037 AD) labeled ullya, incarnationists. He reports from #Abd al-Qhir:
I found one (of them) citing, in proof of the possibility of Gods incarnation in bodies, Gods word to the angels regarding Adam: So that when I have made him complete and breathed into him of my spirit, fall down making obeisance to him. (The incarnationist) held that God commanded the angels to bow down before Adam only because he embodied himself in Adam and really abode in him because he created him in the most beautiful form. Therefore, (God) said: We have created man in the finest form (95:4). 102

Al-Baghddis polemical tone notwithstanding, these so-called ullya correctly perceived the implications of the Qur"nic narrative. In both Sunn and Sh# tradition we also learn that before the creation of the world God brought forth an anthropomorphic light, usually identified with Nr Muammad (the Light of Muammad), from whose body the celestial/heavenly world is sometimes said to be derived. When Allah (God) breathed of his spirit into Adam, the Nr Muammad incarnated in the molded body of Adam.103 In surah 2:30, this black Adam whom the angels of God are ordered to worship is described as Gods khalfa.104 The basic meaning of the root kh-l-f, as Wadd al-Q has demonstrated,105 is to succeed and replace or substitute for another. As the cult statue
99

On Ibls in Muslim tradition see Peter J. Awn, Satans Tragedy and Redemption: Ibls in Sufi Psychology (SHR 44; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983). 100 Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qurn and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge, 2010) 39. 101 Reynolds, Qurn and Its Biblical Subtext, 46-7. 102 Abu Manr #Abd al-Qhir b. hir al-Baghddi, al-Farq Bayn al-Firaq, translated by Abraham S. Halkin, Moselm Schisms and Sects (Al-Far Bain al-Fira), Veing the History of the Various Philosophical Systems Developed in Islam (Tel Aviv, 1935) 79. 103 U. Rubin, Pre-existence and Light: Aspects of the concept of Nr Muammad, Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975):62-119; John MacDonald, Islamic Eschatology-1: The Creation of Man and the Angels in the Eschatological Literature, Islamic Studies 3 (1964): 285-308. 104 While some commentators have speculated whether man was made a successor to another species which held the title of khalfah before him, we can safely accept the majority opinion that man was made the caliph of God. Mustanir Mir, Adam in the Qur"n, Islamic Culture 62 (1988): 4 [art.=1-11]. 105 The Term Khalfa in Early Exegetical Literature, Die Welt des Islams 28 (1988): 392-411. See also Lane, Lexicon, 1:792-98 s.v. .

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substituted for the god on earth; as the Hebrew Adam as elem substituted for God on earth; so too does the Qur"nic Adam as khalfa substitute for God on earth (I am going to place a khalfa in the earth [fi l-ari] 2:30). The Hebrew elem and Arabic khalfa are cognate concepts.106 Similar to the Hebrew Adam-as-elem, the Qur"nic Adam-as-khalfa has been identified as the likeness (mithl) or form (ra) of God. The important and oft-repeated Qurnic verse Al-Shr 42:11: Laysa kamithlihi shay", There is none like Him, really reads There is nothing like (ka) His likeness (mithlihi).107 And as Ibn al-Jawz (d. 1201) noted, taken literally (hir) these words indicate that God has a mithl, likeness, which is like nothing and like which there is nothing.108 The root m-th-l means to be like, compare, mithl similar, image, tamthl assimilation, likening. The mithl or divine likeness of 42:11 was understood in some circles as a reference to Gods form, ra, which term is a synonym of mithl.109 His mithl, likeness, IS Adam, the Perfect Man (al-Insn al-Kmil), according to the Sufi Sheikh al-Akbar Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240).110 Surat al-Shr 42:11 is thus read as, There is nothing like His Likeness (Adam). According to a hadith of Prophet Muhammad, God created Adam according to His form (ratihi).111 God Himself has an asan ra, most beautiful form,112 which was equated with Adams asan taqwm, most beautiful stature (95:4).113 Gods and Adams forms are therefore alike, and Adam is the very Likeness, mithl, of Allah. The mithl or Divine Likeness (Adam) has no equal. We find the same declaration made in Egyptian literature about Atum/Amun, King of the Gods. In the Leiden Hymn to Amun Re it affirms:
All gods are three: Amun, Re, Ptah, they have no equal. His name is hidden as Amun, he is Re in the face, and his body is Ptah.

Wa-lam yakun lahu kufuan had And none is equal to Him The Black Adam of the Qurn thus is the divine statue or earthly body of Allah in which the Ba or essence of Allah indwells.

106

On the relatedness of the two concepts see Abraham I. Katsh, Judaism in Islm: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of the Koran and its Commentaries (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1954) 26 n. 2. 107 See True Islam, The Truth of God: The Bible, The Quran and the Secret of the Black God (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2007) 78-85. 108 Ibid. 109 Lane, Arabic Lexicon, s.v. ra. 110 On Ibn al-Arabs al-Insn al-Kmil see John T. Little, Al-Insn Al-Kmil: The Perfect Man According to Ibn alArab, Muslim World 77 (1987): 43-54. 111 Bukhr, a, isti"dhn,1. 112 Tirmidhi, Jami al-Sahih, #3288; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 5:243. 113 Ahmad b. Hanbal, Kitab al-Sunna (Mecca, 1349 H) 159.

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The Kaba and the Black God of Kemet

I. Cognate Religions

Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop had already pointed out some of the parallels between Kemetic and Islamic traditions.114 These were primarily ritual parallels: the Muslim ablution, the ritual prayers, the 30-day fast, the abstention from pork, all find precedent in ancient Egypt.115 To this list may be added the seven-fold circumambulation around the sacred temple.116

But the theologies implied behind these rituals were equally similar. Diop hints at this fact:
It is remarkable that many Arabic religious terms can be obtained by a simple combination of the three Egyptian ontological notions, Ba, Ra, Ka. As examples we can cite: KABAR (a) = The action of raising the arms in prayer RAKA = The action of placing the forehead on the ground KAABA = The holy place of Mecca117

114

Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991); The African Origin of Civilization (Westport: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1967); The Cultural Unity of Black Africa (1963/1989). 115 See also Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Sere Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt, New Edition (1957; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). 116 See Heinrich Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichsche Buchhandlung, 1891) 346; Hugo Gremann, Tod und Auferstehung des Osiris nach seiner Festbruchen und Umzgen, Der Alt Orient 23 (1923): 23. 117 Diop, Cultural Unity of Black Africa, 89.

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Our focus here will be on the last point: Islams most sacred house of God, Bayt Allah, and also its central religious symbol (i.e. the Black Stone or Al-Hajar Al-Aswad) housed therein are both called Kaba. In order to fully understand and appreciate this verbal assonance between Kemetic ontological notions and Islamic religious terminology and sacred architecture and thus appreciate Diops insight - we must have a clear understanding of the relevant Kemetic concepts. I.1. Ancient Egyptian Ontology Kemetic ontology recognized different aspects or modes (upwards of nine) of divine and human being-ness, usually identified by such terms as: khat, ab, ren, ka, ba, shut, akh, sahu. However, regarding the gods the emphasis was clearly on but three of these: Your ba is in the sky Your body (khat) is in the netherworld Your statue (=ka) is in the temple

This recurrent tripartite theme has been elucidated by Egyptologist Jan Assmann.118 The ba, the ka, and the khat of the gods were often the focus of the theologians of Kemet. The Khat was the mortal body of the god, liable to decay and thus becoming a corpse and a mummy (sahu). The ka, on the other hand, was the immortal body of the god. It is a perfect replica of the khat or mortal body, without the mortality of it. In a famous depiction, the god Khnum who created humans on his potters wheel is shown creating the khat and its twin ka simultaneously. Contrary to popular Western notions, the ka was not the immaterial soul or spirit of man/gods. It was as much a spiritual-material mode of being as the khat was, but it was a more transcendent mode of being. It is identified with the cult statue of the god in the temple, which itself was
118

The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001).

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understood to be the divine body of the god on earth. The ba, often described as the soul, is better described as the Kemetic notion of vital force or the essence of the gods. According to Eberhard Otto, in humans the ba represented the embodiment of his/her vital forces and in the gods the embodiment of divine powers.119 It was this vital force/power that was ritualistically called down by the Egyptian priests to inhabit (!) and thus enliven the cult statute. As Prof Emily Teeter of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago explains:
The divine statue was provided as a physical form (ka) in which the ba could reside so that human beings could communicate with itOnce filled with and enlivened by the ba of the god, the cult statue became the ka, or physical form of the god.120

How does this relate to the Islamic Kaba (=Ka + Ba)? The Black Stone in pre-Islamic Arabia served the same purpose as the cult statue did in Kemet:
A principal sacred object in Arabian religion was the stone. . . . Such stones were thought to be the residence of a god hence the term applied to them by Byzantine Christian writers of the fifth and sixth centuries: 'baetyl', from bet'el, 'the house of god'.

Like the ka-statue of the Kemetic deities a baetyl or bayt illah (Arabic house of god) was regarded as the container of the god.121 And as Warwick Ball points out, this characteristically Arabian/Semitic tradition of the cultic stone finds its great expression today in the Kaba of Mecca:
Abstract representations of deity in the form of a square or cube was common throughout the (Pre-Hellenic) Semitic Near EastThis was the baetyl, or stone cult object, the focal point of so many temples not subject to Classicising influencesIndeed, the ancient Semitic idea of the sacred cube reaches culmination in the center of Semitic worship today: the Kabaat Mecca.122

Cult Statue (ka) of Osiris

Tremendous light was shed on the Arabian/Islamic Kaba and thus on its similarities with the Kemetic ka-statue by Prof Hildegard Lewy (d. 1969), Romanian Jew from Klausenburg and Semitics scholar and Assyriologist from Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. In her exceptionally important article Origin And Significance of the Magen Dawid: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca,123 Lewy documented an ancient
119

E. Otto, Die Anschauung vom B3 nach Coffin Texts Sp. 99-104, Miscellanea Gregoriana (1941), 151-60. For more recent discussions see Louis Vico Zabkar, A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (University of Chicago Press, 1968); R.B. Finnestad, On transposing Soul and Body into a monistic conception of Being. An example from Ancient Egypt, Religion 16 (1986): 359-373. 120 Teeter, Religion and Ritual, 44. 121 Healey, Religion of the Nabataeans, 157. 122 Warwick Ball, Rome in the East: the transformation of an empire (Routledge, 2000) 379-380. 123 Hildegard Lewy, Origin And Significance of the Magen Dawid: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca, ArOr 18 (1950): 330-365.

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Semitic tradition out of which the cults of Jerusalem and Mecca evolved centered on a black stone that was considered to be both an embodiment of the primordial waters and a piece of the body of a deity, the divine body being made from those dark waters. Lewy noted:
the Black Stonewas thought to bea part of the body of a great god(I)n the form of a black meteorite a piece of the deitys astral body was visible to the congregation at all times124

This stone, through which the deity was worshipped, was anciently housed in a cubed temple or shrine covered in black curtains. The blackness of this pre-Islamic Arabian/Semitic deity and his cult Black Stone of Aphrodite inspired associations with the astral deity Saturn, the Black Planet,125 Paphos, Cyprus whose temple was also made of black stone, draped with black curtains, and featured a black stone representing the deity or an anthropomorphic statue of the deity made from black stone. Both al-Masudi (d. 956) and alDimasqi (d. 1327)578 report identifications of the Meccan Kaba with the cult of the black deity Saturn, as did the Dabistn i Mazhib. The black stone of the Meccan Kaba, Lewy has well argued, must be understood against the backdrop of the broader Semitic cult of stones. While the shrine or temple itself was feminized and therefore identified with a goddess, the stone inside the shrine is identified with the male god, Allh. This point is explicitly made in a Muslim tradition according to which al-Z ubayr b. al-Awwm (d. 656), famous companion of the Prophet Muhammad, was digging in alHijr while rebuilding the Kaba and found a stone on which was written: innn Allh Dh Bakka, I am Allh, Lord of Bekka (=Mecca).126 We have every reason to believe that the cult of the Kaba had the same significance for the prophet Muhammad that it did for the ancient Arabians: it was the cult center of the Black God, Allh. As Lewy well argues in her study of the cult of the Black God in Mecca and Jerusalem:
the Black Stonewas thought to bea part of the body of a great god(I)n the form of a black meteorite a piece of the deitys astral body was visible to the congregation at all timesIt wasno break with the ancient religion of Mecca when Mohammedset up the Hajar al-aswad (Black Stone) in a place where it was accessible to the eyes and the lips of the worshipersIt ispertinent to recall that, before designatingthe Kaba as the qibla Mohammed ordered his followers to turn their faces in prayer toward the sacred rock in Jerusalem. The significance of this command becomes apparent if it is kept in mind that the qibla is an outgrowth of the beliefthat man can address his prayers only to a being visible

124 125

Lewy, Origin and Significance, 345. 348, 349. The Babylonians called Saturn Mi The Black. See Robert Brown, The Great Dionysiak Myth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1878) 329. According to the Dabistn i Mazhib or Schools of Religions Saturns temple was constructed out of black stone as was his statue that stood there. In addition, Saturns officiating ministers were all black complexioned persons, Ethiopians, etc. The Dabistn or School of Manners, trans. David Shea and Anthony Troyer (New York and London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901) 22. 126 Al-Azraqi, Kitab Akhbar Makka, apud Die Chroniken der Stadt Mecca, ed. Ferdinand Wstenfeld (Leipzig, 185861) 42-3; Tabari, Tafsir (Cairo ed.) III:61.

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to the eyes127when prayingthe worshipper turned his eyes either to the heavenly body itself or, in it absence, to the stone or statue representing it on earth. If, however, he was not present in the town where a sacred stone, assumed to be a part of the deitys astral body, was visible to the congregation, he still turned his eyes in the direction of this sanctuary, it being supposed that, having visited and inspected the deitys body on the occasion of the annual pilgrimage, he could visualize it and thus address his prayer to it even from a distant point or locality.

While Muhammad, upon conquering Mecca, destroyed most of the 360 pre-Islamic idols that had been housed in the Kaba, he not only kept this pre-Islamic idol, i.e. the Black Stone, but he made it the center of Islamic ritual. Muhammads reported interaction with Al-Hajar alAswad or the Black Stone is equally suggestive. He is known to have circumambulated the Kaba on camelback while pointing to the Black Stone with a staff exclaiming, Allhu Akbar (Allh is the greatest).128 He was observed touching the stone with a stick and then kissing the stick. According to Abd Allah b. Umar, son of the second caliph, Muhammad would touch the Black Stone, kiss it, and weep for a long time. He reportedly said to Umar: O Umar, this is the place where one should shed tears. It is not made clear why interacting with the Black Stone was a source of such sadness, but that the Prophet made some intimate, deeply emotional association between the stone and Allh is quite evident from these reports. In this regard, a famous hadith of the Prophet is relevant:
The Kaba (stone) is the Right Hand of Allh and with it He shakes the hands of His servants as a man shakes the hand of His friend.129

Right Hand here seems to be synecdoche (a part of something standing for the whole). In the history of religious symbolism the Hand symbolized a transmitter of spiritual and physical energy.130 This is an apt description of the black body that the creator-god made for himself in order to be able to transmit his divine luminosity to earth without scorching it. As the Indian Islamic scholar Muhammad Hamidullah summed up the meaning of the Black Stone: The right hand of the invisible God must be visible symbolically. And that is the al-Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone in the Ka'bah. Diops insight is thus well-founded: Islams Kaba is the Kemetic ka and ba, the ka or divine body/cult statue in which resides the ba or divine essence of the god, Allah.

127

We are here reminded of the famous Hadth of Jibrl in which Muhammad defines ihsan as to worship God as though you see Him, and if you cannot see Him, then indeed He sees you." 128 Bukhar, Sahih, II, 697. 129 Ibn Qutayba, Ta' wil Mukhtalif al-Hadith (1972) 215 (=1995 ed; p. 198, 262); Al-Qurtubi, al-Asna fi Sharh Asma' Allah al-Husna, II:90-91. 130 Jack Tressidder, Symbols and Their Meanings (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006) 22.

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His Throne is Ever on The Water

I. The Throne of Allah
And He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days and His Throne was upon the water that He might try you, which of you is best in conduct. ... -- Sura 11:7

The above passage from the Qurn is famous, but very enigmatic. I suggest that a proper understanding is possible if we read it in the light of Egyptian Sacred Science. First, it must be pointed out that the whole theme of a god enthroned has very specific connotations. In the History of Religions the divine throne is the signature of a very specific type of deity: the anthropomorphic (human-like) deity. Throughout the Ancient Near East and India the anthropomorphic gods of the highest order were depicted sitting on their throne. As the gods were material beings, the thrones were material objects.

Mesopotamian God Ur-Nammu enthroned

Ancient Indic ProtoShiva god enthroned

Canaanite/Israelite God Ala (El) from Ugarit ,1300 BCE.

Israelite God Yahweh enthroned on a 4th cent. BCE Gaza coin.

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In Islamic tradition the divine throne is equally material. The Throne of Allah has a very significant and exalted place in the Qurn.131 It is called the Throne of Grace (23:117), the Mighty Throne of Power (23:86), and the Glorious Throne of Power (83:15). The Arabic word arsh literally means a thing constructed for shade or anything roofed. The court or sitting place of the king is called arsh. The most famous of these Throne passages in the Qurn describe Allah anthropomorphically sitting Himself on the arsh. In Sura 57:4 it reads, "He it is who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then He mounted the Throne (thumma stawa ala l-arsh)." Sura 20:5 reads: Ar-Rahman 'ala-'l-'arsh istawa, meaning "The Beneficent One has sat down firmly on the Throne." Allah's angels are said to encircle the Throne (39:75) and hold it up, Those who bear the Throne of Power and those around it (Sura 40:7). According to the early Muslims (Salaf or Pious Ancestors) the Throne is a material object, separate from the rest of creation and not to be understood as an allegorical expression for the creation of heaven and earth.132 As Allah sits firmly on the Throne of Power, His feet are said to rest on the Kursi or stool that accompanies the Throne. Though Kursi can signify seat in a very general sense, it usually meant a seat with no back or armrests, a stool.133 Kursi is mentioned only twice in the Qur"n, but several times in the sayings of the Prophet. The latter reportedly made it clear that the throne and its divine occupant were material. According to a tradition on the authority of Jubayr b. Mutim and found in Abu Dawud, Ibn Khuzayma, at-Tabarani and others, God sits on the Throne like a man sitting on a leather saddle and makes it creak.
[Jubayr b. Mut'im] narrates: A Bedouin came to find the Messenger of God and said to him: "O Messenger of God, the men are all in, the women and the children perish, the resources are growing thin, the beasts are dying. Pray then to God in our favor so it rains! We ask of you to intercede for us alongside God, and we ask of God to intercede for us alongside of you." "Unfortunate one!" answered the Messenger of God, "do you know what you're saying?" Then he started to say subhana llah, and did not stop repeating it so long as he didn't see his Companions doing as much. Then he said [to the Bedouin]: "Unfortunate one! One does not ask God to intercede alongside any one of His creatures! God is very much above this! Unfortunate one! Do you know who God is? (God is on His Throne, which is above His heavens, and heavens are above His earth,) like this"and the Messenger of God put his fingers in the shape of a tent and it creaks under Him like the creaking of the saddle under the rider.134

The Prophet compares Allah sitting on the Throne and making it creak to a man sitting on a saddled horse and making the saddle creak. The anthropomorphism is blatant. The Prophets physical gesturing hardly allows us to see in this report anything other than a physical description of Gods establishment on a physical Throne.

131 132

Cf. Thomas J. OShaughnessy, Gods Throne and Biblical Symbolism in the Quran, Numen 20 (1973), 202-221. For a look at the early traditionalist interpretation of the arsh narratives cf. Gosta Vitestan, Arsh and Kursi: An Essay on the Throne Traditions in Islam, in Living Waters Scandinavian Orientalistic Studies ed. by Egon Keck, Svend Sondergaad, and Ellen Wulff (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1990), 372. 133 "Kursi," EI2, 509. 134 Abu Dawud, as-Sunan, 18 4726; Ibn Khuzayma, Kitb al- Tawd 103: 6ff.

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II. Gods Throne on the Waters

Image courtesy Akbar Shareef Muhammad

The above image depicts Osiris sitting on his throne which itself sits on a slab of water. This too is a very common Ancient Near Eastern theme. See for example the Mesopotamian Sun-God Shamash sitting enthroned above a slab of frozen water, and the Israelite god Yahweh depicted on a 7th cent. BCE Hebrew seal from Judah enthroned in a boat in water. In this Ancient Near Eastern context, and in the Egyptian context in particular, this divine throne above water has specific metaphorical as well as physical significance.

Sumerian Sun Shammah enthroned above water

Israelite god Yahweh enthroned above water

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II.1. Gods Aquatic Body The religious texts of the ancient East, i.e. the hieroglyphic writings of ancient Kemet (Egypt), the cuneiform writings of ancient Sumer (Chaldea/Mesopotamia), and the Sanskrit writings of ancient India, record the history of God the Creator of the cosmos as a divine Black man. According to these texts, the Creator God was originally a luminous, formless essence hidden within a primordial substantive darkness called waters. At some point, this divine luminosity concentrated itself within this aquatic darkness and produced the atom or first particle of distinct matter, the golden egg of ancient myth. From this first atom there emerged many atoms, which the God used to build up his own luminous body. This body was anthropomorphic (man-like) and thus this God was the first man in existence, a self-created man. This was a brilliantly luminous man, represented by the so-called sun-gods of ancient myth like Ra of Egypt and Shammash of Mesopotamia. At a certain point the God decided to veil his luminosity with a body made from that same primordial aquatic dark substance from which he initially emerged. In Mesopotamian tradition this aquatic blackness from which the divine black body was formed was called apsu; in Indic tradition tamas; in Kemet, nun; in the Bible, admh; in the Qurn, ama", This divine black body refracted the divine light as it passed through the hair pores covering the body. This black body is therefore referred to in later literature as Gods shadow as it shades creation from the scorching heat of the sun or luminous body of God. As the light passed through the hair pores of this divine black body it produced a dark-blue iridescence or glow. The ancients symbolized this visual effect by the semiprecious stone sapphire also known as lapis lazuli, which was a dark blue stone with golden speckles throughout. The Gods body was thus depicted dark blue and said to be made of sapphire/lapis lazuli. 135

The Eternal God, Amun (Atum), in Black and Blue

135

For documentation of this ancient Myth of the Black God see Islam, Truth of God, Chapter V.

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In antiquity various aspects of the gods were represented zoomorphically. That is to say, different animals were used to symbolize distinct characteristics or attributes of a deity,136 who was otherwise anthropomorphic. The paramount attribute animal of the black creatorgod was the black bovine, usually a bull. The bull represented potency, fecundity, and primordial materiality, all essential characteristics of the creator-god.137 The color of the bull was not arbitrary. As Ren L. Vos pointed out, Color reflected the nature of a god and thus the skin color constituted the vehicle of the divine nature of a sacred animal.138 Over against the golden lion or falcon, which symbolized morning/midday sunlight, the black bovine symbolized night and Cult Statue of materiality.139 The black bovine was associated with Creator-god Min the black primordial waters from which the creatorof Kemet god emerged. As Asko Parpola notes regarding the Indic tradition: the dark buffalo bathing in muddy water was conceived as the personification of the cosmic waters of chaos.140 The black bull thus came to symbolize the black material body that the creator-god will form for himself, the black skin of the bovine signaling the black skin of the Mnevis Bull deity. See for example the black skin of the Egyptian deity Min, the
136

On the attribute animal of ancient Near Eastern religion see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982)109-25; P. Amiet, Corpus des cylinders de Ras Shamra-Ougarit II: Sceaux-cylinres en hematite et pierres diverses (Ras Shamra-Ougarit IX; Paris: ditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1992) 68; Attribute Animal in idem, Art of the Ancient Near East, trans. J. Shepley and C. Choquet (New York: Abrams, 1980) 440 n. 787. 137 On the symbolism of the bull see Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (1958; Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996) 82-93; Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter W. van der Horst (edd.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd Edition (Leiden and Grand Rapids, MI.: Brill and Eerdmans, 1999) s.v. Calf, by N. Wyatt, 180-182; ERE 2:887-889 s.v. Bull, by C.J. Caskell. See also Ren L. Vos, Varius Coloribus Apis: Some Remarks of the Colours of Apis and Other Sacred Animals, in Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors and Harco Willems (edd.), Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Part 1. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 1998) 715, who notes that the bulls of Egypt materialize upon the earth the creative forces of the hidden demiurge (creator-god). 138 Varius Coloribus Apis, 711. 139 Asko Parpola, New correspondences between Harappan and Near Eastern glyptic art, South Asian Archaeology 1981, 178 notes: Indeed, the golden-skinned hairy lion is an archetypal symbol for the golden-rayed sun, the lord of the dayNightis equally well represented by the bull, whose horns connect it with the crescent of the moon. On the bull and the moon-god in ancient Near Eastern mythology see also Tallay Ornan, The Bull and its Two Masters: Moon and Storm Deities in Relation to the Bull in Ancient Near Eastern Art, Israel Exploration Journal 51 (2001) 126; Dominique Collon, The Near Eastern Moon God, in Diederik J.W. Meijer (ed.), Natural Phenomena: Their Meaning, Depiction and Description in the Ancient Near East (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1992) 19-37. On the falcon as symbol of the sun-god see J. Assmann, Liturgische Lieder an den Sonnengott. Untersuchungen zur gyptischen Hymnik I (MS 19; Berlin, 1969) 170-1. 140 Parpola, New correspondences, 181. See also W.F. Albright who noted that the conception of the river as mighty bull is common: The Mouth of the Rivers, AJSL 35 (1991): 167 n.3 [art.=161-195]. In the g Veda the cosmic waters are cows (e.g. 4.3.11; 3.31.3; 4.1.11) and in Pacavia-Brmana 21.3.7 the spotted cow abal is addressed: Thou art the [primeval ocean]. On water and cows in Indic tradition see further Anne Feldhaus, Water and Womanhood. Religious Meanings of Rivers in Maharashtra (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 46-47.

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creator god par excellence, and his black bull Mnevis.141 The Sumerian creator-god Enki was called am-gig-abzu, black bull of the Aps (primordial waters),142 and he possessed a black body made from those primordial waters.143 Ancient Indic tradition, which is a Kushite (African) tradition at root, clearly expresses this motif. After his initial creation of the celestial cosmos the luminous, anthropomorphic Indic creator-deity Prajpati-Brahm is said to have wrapped himself in the primordial waters which were personified in his daughter/wife Vk/Virj.144 He then became haritah yvah, dark brown like night (yvah, g Veda 6.48.6.) with a ting of yellow (a yellow glow, haritah).145 Prajpati-Brahms copulation with Vk is a metaphor for the reuniting of fire (breath) with Viu statue, water.146 Prajpati-Brahms (re-)uniting with Madhava Moorti Vk (primordial water/primordial cow) produced the ida sarvam or phenomenal, Prajpati-Brahm material world, beginning with Manu, the first earthly human, which is only Prajpati-Brahm himself reborn in the phenomenal, material world.147 According to the Trimrti or Triad tradition of the Purnas Viu is the name of the creator-god PrajpatiBrahm with his luminous body cloaked within an aquatic body made from the primordial waters. Therefore, as Viu, (Prajpati-)Brahm is called he who dwells in the [causal] waters, Nryana. By assuming this form (Prajpati-)Brahm showed mercy on creation. Thus, in his
Viu

141

Robert A. Armour, Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 1986, 2001) 157; Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mythology Middlesex: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1968) 110. While Min was associated with a white bull in New Kingdom Panopolis and Coptos at an earlier period in Heliopolis he was associated with the black bull Mnevis. See G.D. Hornblower, Min and His Functions, Man 46 (1946): 116 [art.=113-121). On Min and black bovines see also H. Gauthier, Les personnel du dieu Min (Le Caire, 1931; IFAO. Recherches dArchologie 2) 55-57. On the mythological significance of the black bovine skin see especially Vos, Varius Coloribus Apis. 142 See See W.F. Albright, The Mouth of the Rivers, AJSL 35 (1991): 161-195, esp. 167. The Babylonian Tiamat (primordial salt-waters) seems also to have been presented as a bovine in the Enma Elish: see B. Landsberger and J.V. Kinnier Wilson, The Fifth Tablet of Enuma Elis, JNES 20 (1961): 175 [art.=154-179]. On the black bull and the black waters of creation see also Vos, Varius Coloribus Apis, 715, 718. 143 See Wesley Muhammad, Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2009) 91-97. 144 See G.H. Godbole, Later Vedic and Brahmanical Accounts, in Dange, Myths of Creation, 13). On Vk as primordial matter see Nagar, Image of Brhma, viii; Joshi, Prajpati, 113. 145 See Taittirya Brhmaa 2.3.5.1; atapatha-Brhmaa 6.2.2.2. On Vk and the primordial waters see ibid., 6.1.1.9; Pacaavea-Brhmaa 20.14.2; g Veda 10.125.3; Jaiminya-Brhmaa 2.252 (Vk as primordial cow); Bosch, Golden Germ, 52-53. 146 See Mishra, Brahm-Worship. 11. On the fiery breath (Agni) and the waters see further Kuiper, Golden Germ, 27-30; Bosch, Golden Germ, 57-62. 147 atapatha-Brhmaa 6.6.1.19; 9.4.1.12; J. Gonda, All, Universe and Totality in the atapatha-Brhmaa, Journal of the Oriental Institute 32 (1982): 1-17; Joshi, Prajpati in Vedic Mythology and Ritual.

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Viu form he is called auspicious.148 Viu is depicted both with a pitch-black body, alluding to the dark aquatic matter from which it was formed, and a dark blue body, alluding to the interaction of the light of Prajpati-Brahm with this black matter. The black bull (k" km) of Egypt, Apis, likewise personified the waters of the Nile which was regarded as a type of Nun, the dark, primeval watery mass out of which creation sprang, and he (Apis) was associated with the Black God Osiris, who himself was identified with the aquatic element.149 Plutarch (d. 120 CE) thus notes:
Not only the Nile, but every form of moisture (the Egyptians) call simply the effusion of Osiris; and in their holy rites the water jar in honor of the god heads the procession.150

Above we noted that the myth of Ra joining Osiris in the Duat or Underworld is actually a picturesque way of presenting Ras incarnation in the black, aquatic body personified in Osiris, ruler of the Duat. The Duat represents the primordial waters and is explicitly identified with the black body of Osiris;151 the sun god plunged into the primordial waters, out of which creation originally arosethe sun god absorbed the chaotic power of the primordial waters, which engulfed the remnants-flesh-of the once virile solar god.152 Osiris, or Atum, is thus called Auf-Ra, the flesh of Ra.

148

On Viu see Danilou, Myths and Gods of India, Chapters Eleven through Fourteen; Arvind Sharma, The Significance of Viu Reclining on the Serpent, Religion 16 (1986): 101-114; Nanditha Krishna, The Art and Iconography of Vishnu-Narayana (Bombay, 1980); Kalpana S. Desai, Iconography of Viu (In Northern India, Upto the Mediaeval Period) (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1973);F.B.J Kuiper, The Three Strides of Viu, in idem, Ancient Indian Cosmogony, 41-55; Bhattachari, Indian Theogony, Chapter Fourteen; Martin, Gods of India, Chapter Three; J. Gonda, Aspects of Early Viuism (Utrecht; N.V.A. Oosthoeks Uitgevers Mij, 1954). See also Wendy Doniger Oflaherty, The Submarine Mare in the Mythology of iva, JRAS 1971 9-27 149 See mile Chassinat, La Mise a Mort Rituelle DApis, Recueil de travaux relatifs a la philology et a larcheologie egyptiennes et assyriennes 38 [1916] 33-60; E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). Egyptian Text Transliterated and Translated [New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1967] cxxiii. 150 Isis and Osiris, 36, 365B. 151 See above note 38. 152 Darnell and Manassa, Tutankhamuns Armies, 22-23.

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That the throne and the watery dais upon which it sits have somatic significance, viz. they signify aspects of the body of the deity, can be demonstrated. First, it is known that the whole of the Ancient Near Eastern and Indian sacred temple reflected the bod(ies) of the god to whom it is dedicated and that the throne-room was a miniature temple itself. The temple was considered an architectonic icon: an image in stone of the god. In particular, the temple architecture symbolically reflects the anthropomorphic body of the god and houses the story of how this divine body emerged out of the primordial waters.153 Thus, the seven levels of the Mesopotamian ziggurat or stepped-pyramid represented the seven stages of the divine descent from the highest heaven into material enmeshment (incarnation).154 The temple is thus the link between heaven and earth, dur-an-ki, its top portion touching heaven, its bottom reaching deep into the Abzu or primordial waters.155 The lowest level of the ziggurat and the exterior walls of the temple represent the external body of the god, which is associated with the primordial waters: thus the undulating course of the bricks on the external walls of the Egyptian temple are designed to imitate the waves of Nun, the primordial waters in Egyptian cosmogonic thought.156
The Seven-step ziggurat of Mesopotamia and the Sevenstage descent of luminous Spirit into Black Matter
153

Mark S. Smith, Like Deities, Like Temples (Like People), in John Day (ed.), Temple and Worship Biblical Israel (London/New York: Clark, 2005) 21; Andrzej Wierciski, Pyramids and Ziggurats as the Architectonic Representations of the Archetype of the Cosmic Mountain, Occasional Publications in. Classical Studies 1 (1978): 69-110; I.W. Mabbett, The Symbolism of Mount Meru, History of Religions 23 (1983) 64-83; Mohiy wl-Din Ibrahim, The God of the Great Temple of Edfu, in John Ruffle, G.A. Gaballa and Kenneth A. Kitchen (edd.), Orbis Aegyptiorum Speculum: Glimpses of Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honour of H.W. Fairman (Warminster, 1979) 170-171; Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, Image of the World and Symbol of the Creator: On the Cosmological and Iconological Values of the Temple of Edfu (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1985); Stella Kramrish, The Temple as Purusa, in Pramod Chandra (ed) Studies in Indian Temple Architecture (American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975) 40-46. Erik Hornung, Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought (Timken Publishers, 1992) Chapter 6. 154 Mabbett, Symbolism of Mount Meru, 64i; Amar Annus, The Souls Ascent and Tauroctony: On Babylonian Sediment in the Syncretic Religious Doctrines of Late Antiquity, in Thomas Richard Kmmerer (ed.), Studies on Ritual and Society in the Ancient Near East. Tartuer Symposien 1998-2004 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007) 1-53; Pirjo Lapinkivi, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2004) 146. 155 D.O. Edzard, Deep-Rooted Skyscrapers and Bricks: Ancient Mesopotamian Architecture and its Imagery, in M. Mindlin, M.J. Geller and J.E. Wansbrough (edd.), Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East (London: University of London, 1987) 13-24. 156 A.J. Spenser, The Brick Foundation of Late-Period Temples and their Mythological Origin, in John Ruffle, G.A. Gaballa and Kenneth A. Kitchen (edd.), Orbis Aegyptiorum Speculum: Glimpses of Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honour of H.W. Fairman (Warminster, 1979) 133; Dunand and Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 88; Hornung, Idea into Image, 119. On the cosmic/cosmogonic symbolism of the Egyptian temple see also John Baines, Temple Symbolism, RAIN 15 (1976): 10-15.

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A. The Luxor Temple of Kemet B. The Prasada Temple of Hindu India C. Layout of the Temple of Solomon reflecting the body of the High Priest, the Divine Man (Yahweh)

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As the exterior temple walls with their wave-like bricks symbolize the earthly body of the god and the interior of the temple the Holy of Holies signifies the gods internal essence/glory, so too is this pattern reflected in the arrangement of the cultstatue inside the temple. The bottom wavelike dais is the equivalent of the temple walls with its undulating bricks; the boxlike throne represents the material body of the god, but one of a higher nature than the bottom or most external body; and the god sitting on top is the ka, the immortal body. The correctness of this insight is indicated by the significance of the so-called cube-statues that became prevalent during Kemets Middle Kingdom (2040 BCE 1783 BCE). This is a box like structure with a human figure emerging out of it. As Moustafa Gadalla explains, the box-like structure in general in Egyptian thought is the model of the earth and the material world. Thus,
In these cube statues, there is the powerful sense of the subject emerging from the prison of the cube. Its symbolic significance is that the spiritual principle is emerging from the material world.157

This is also the significance of the box-like thrones upon which the Egyptian deities and kings sit. Gadalla notes: The Divine person is shown sitting squarely on a cube, i.e. mind over matter.158 The mind over matter explanation is clich: this arrangement signifies in actuality the predominance of the divine person/body (the ka) over the mortal body (the khat). Like the temple itself, these throne-room accessories tell us something about the bodies of the gods.

Khepri form and Asar (Osiris) form of Atum, enthroned on cubed throne

157 158

Gadalla, Egyptian Cosmology, 53. Gadalla, Egyptian Cosmology, 53.

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II.2. Yahweh-Elohim (Allah): The Aquatic Body in Biblical Tradition Because of the noted relationship between Ancient Near Eastern (especially Egyptian) tradition and Biblical tradition, we are not surprised to find that the god of the Bible is described in many Jewish sources as possessing this same aquatic body that the Ancient Near Eastern deities possessed. The esoteric tradition of the priests of the Jerusalem Temple identified the long dark blue robe (mel) of the high priest with the earthly body of Yahweh.159 This esoteric priestly tradition was inherited by the later rabbis, according to whom the dark blue ritual tassel (iit) worn on the prayer shawl (tallit) of observant Jews symbolized the sapphiric body of God.160 Sapphire/lapis lazuli is a semiprecious stone which possessed great mythological significance in the Ancient Near East, being considered the ultimate Divine substance.161 In its natural state sapphire/lapis lazuli is deep blue with fine golden spangles and was associated both with the starry night heavens and the primordial waters.162 The divine sapphiric body was thus an aquatic body. Jewish sources from the first century CE and beyond document the belief that Yahweh acquired his aquatic body in much the same way that Atum did. The later Jewish mystical tradition, Kaballah, therefore understandably identified Yahweh with Adam (Kadmon).163 Gnosticism was a religious/philosophical movement of the 1st - 4th centuries CE. Though this movement was made up of various groups,164 the earliest no doubt formed around a group of renegade Jewish priests from the Jerusalem Temple who,165 amazingly, developed a
159 160

Muhammad, Truth of God, 224-229. See Wesley Muhammad, Sapphiric God: Esoteric Speculation on the Divine Body in Post-Biblical Jewish Tradition, @ http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Sapphire_RabbisHTRNo_KabbalahRevised2.1822304 2.pdf. 161 F. Daumas, Lapis-lazuli et Rgnration, in Sydney Aufrre, LUnivers minral dans la pense gyptienne, 2 vols. (Le Caire: Institut Franais dArchologie Orientale du Caire, 1991) 2:463-488; John Irwin, The L Bhairo at Benares (Vras): Another Pre-Aokan Monument? ZDMG 133 (1983): 327-43 [art.=320-352]. 162 Daumas notes: Le lapis-lazuli parat avoir t associ deux principaux aspects de la nature : la nuitet leau primordiale. Lapis-Lazuli rt Rgnration, 465 and passim. 163 On Adam Kadmon v Schwartz, Tree of Souls, 15-16; Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, I:295-298; C.J.M. Hopking, The Practical Kabbalah Guidebook (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2001), 34f.; Leo Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, trns from the French by Nancy Pearson (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971), 116-119; Gershom Sholem, Adam Kadmon, Encyclopedia Judaica 2:248-49; Green, Guide to the Zohar, 46. 164 L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass. And London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996). 165 John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (Qubec, Paris: Les Presses de lUniversit Laval and ditions Peeters, 2001) 257ff; idem, Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History, in in Charles W. Hedrick and Robert Hodgson, Jr. (edd.), Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, & Early Christianity (Peabody, MASS: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986) 55-86. On Jewish Gnosticism see also Gils Quispel, Gnosticism and the New Testament, in J.

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disgust for the God of Israel. Gnostic texts such the Apocraphon of John, the Hypostasis of the Archons, and On the Origin of the World leave no doubt as to why166: it was the material blackness of this God, or his body, that this group of priests revolted against. They had come under the spell of Greek philosophy. Particularly influential on their thinking was the Pythagorean Table of Opposites. According to Pythagoras, that which is characterized by light, spirit, and maleness was good, and that characterized by darkness, materiality, and femininity was bad: the two groups were antithetical. The Gnostics thus split the God of Israel in two. They worshiped as the supreme God the luminous anthropos of Day One of Genesis with his brilliant light-body, usually called phs, which name is Greek and means both light and man. The Gnostics separated this luminous man (phs) from his black material veil. The latter was exclusively identified with the God of the Bible,167 whom they demonized and rejected because of his creation of a material (and thus evil) world. With his black material body, the God of the Bible (Yahweh-Elohim) was seen as evil and even equated with the devil at times.168 Because materiality was associated with femininity according to the Pythagorean Table of Opposites, these early Gnostics represented Yahweh-Elohims black material body as a black goddess, Sophia-Achamoth.

Philip Hyatt (ed.), The Bible in Modern Scholarship. Papers read at the 100 th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 28-30, 1964 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press); idem, Judaism, Judaic Christianity and Gnosis, in A.H.B. Logan and A.J.M. Wedderburn (edd.), The New Testament and Gnosis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Limited, 1983), 46-68; R. McL. Wilson, The Gnostic Problem: A Study of the Relations between Hellenistic Judaism and the Gnostic Heresy (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co. LTD, 1958, 1964 2); Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, the Nature and History of an Ancient Religion, trns. Robert McLachlan Wilson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983); Birger Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 19990). 166 For English translations of these texts see Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Bible (New Seeds, 2006). 167 On the Gnostic demiurge and biblical deity see Simon Ptrement, A Separate God. The Christian Origins of Gnosticism tns. Carol Harrison (New York: HaperCollins Publishing, 1990) Chap. I; Anne Ingvild Slid Gilhus, The Gnostic Demiurge - an Agnostic Trickster, Religion. 14 (1984): 301-11; E. Aydeet Fischer-Mueller, Yaldaboath: The Gnostic Female Principle in its Fallenness, NovTes (1990): 79-95; Ioan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1992) Chapt. 4; Stevan L. Davies, The Lion-Headed Yaldabaoth, Journal of Religious History 11 (1981): 495-500; Jarl Fossum, The Origin of the Gnostic Demiurge, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 61 (1985): 142-52; Nils A. Dahl, The Arrogant Archon and the Lewd Sophia: Jewish Traditions in Gnostic Revolt, in Bentley Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale New Haven, Connecticut, March 28-31, 1978 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981) 2:689-712; Foerster Werner. Gnosis: A Selection of Texts [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974] 1: 11; Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996) 63-79; idem, The demonizing of the demiurge: The innovation of Gnostic myth, in Innovation in Religious Traditions: Essays in the Interpretation of Religious Change (Religion and Society Series 31; Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992) 73107; idem, The Old Testament God in Early Gnosticism, MA thesis, Miami University, Ohio, 1970; Howard M. Jackson, The Lion Becomes Man: The Gnostic Leontomorphic Creator and the Platonic Tradition (SBLDS 81; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985. 168 The Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II, 4, 94.25-26); The Apocryphon of John (II 11, 17-18). See also Joseph Dan, Samael and the Problem of Jewish Gnosticism, in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998) 257-276.

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These (Jewish) Gnostic sources evidence an awareness of the God of Israels aquatic body. A magical invocation to the Jewish God found on a Greek-Hebrew amulet169 and in a Greek magical papyrus170 reads: Thou (whose) form is like heaven, like the sea, like darkness/cloud, the All-shaped.171 Plotinuss Gnostics (Enn. II, 9.10.3) describe the Demiurge or Biblical creatorgod as a dark image (eidolon) in matter of the (S)ouls reflection. Similarly, for the Docetists of Hippolytus (Ref. VIII 9.4-10.1) the creator god of Genesis is an impression in dark matter of a higher light Aeon.172 The Mandean Demiurge Ptahil is a reflection in black water of his father Abathur, an uthra (divine light-being).173 These two figures show some relation to the biblical El (Abathur) and Yahweh (Ptahil).174 The characteristically Gnostic myth of the sunken god explains the origin of the Biblical gods aquatic body: the deity (or his eidolon, image) who, having glanced at and/or descend to the waters below, became engulfed by them and embodied within them.175 Now

169

See Josef Keil, Ein rtselhaftes Amulett, Wiener Jahreshefte 32 (1940): 79-84, esp. 80 and Scholems discussion, Mystical Shape, 28. 170 PGM IV. 3065. 171 My translation. I have departed from standard translations in order to bring out what I believe is the true sense of this passage. The amulet reads: , {}x x which Keil translates du Himmelsgestaltiger, Meeresgestaltiger, Dunkelgestaltiger, du Allgestaltiger (80). PGM IV. 3065 reads: , , , which is translated in Betz (The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press] 97) as, [the] skylike, sealike, cloudlike. See also Adolf Deissmann, Light From the Ancient East. The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-roman World (trns. Lionel R. M. Strachan; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Baker Book House, 1965) 262. The Betz translation of PGM IV 3065 obscures the obvious morphic focus of the passage. Keil seems right in his translation because the amulet, by adding , seems to parallel eidos and morphos. 172 Regarding the Docetic demiurge Couliano notes: He is the image in Darkness of an aeon whose transcendence has been forever separated from the lower world by the firmament. His substance is Darkness Ioan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1992) 95. 173 Right Ginza V 1, 168, 6. 174 See especially the discussion by Nathaniel Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate, 94-5; idem, Abathur: A New Etymology, in John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (edd.), Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995) 171-79. On Mandaeaism and Jewish tradition see Deutsch, Gnostic Imagination; Jarl Fossum, The New Religionsgeschichtliche Schule: The Quest for Jewish Christology, SBL Seminar Papers 30 (1991): 638-646; Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Mandaeans and Heterodox Judaism, HUCA 54 (1983): 147-51; idem, The Alphabet in Mandaean and Jewish Gnosticism, Rel 11 (1981): 227-234; Gilles Quispel, Jewish Gnosis and Mandaen Gnosticism: Some Reflections on the Writing Bront, in Jacques- Mnard (ed.), Les Textes de Nag Hammadi. Colloque du Centre dHistoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23-25 octobre 1974) (NHS 7; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975) 82-122. 175 See e.g. the Mandean demiurge Ptahil (Right Ginza III, 98-100); the divine anthropos of the Naassens (Hippolytus, Ref. V 6, 3-11); and the divine anthropos of Poimandres (Corp. Herm. I 1-32). On the Gnostic myth of the sunken deity see Maria Grazia Lancellotti, The Naassenes: A Gnostic Identity Among Judaism, Christianity, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Traditions (Mnster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000) 87-120, esp. 110-11; Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, the Message of the Alien God & the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 62-65, 116-29, 156-65; idem, Response to G. Quispels Gnosticism and the New Testament, in J. Philip Hyatt (ed.), The Bible in Modern Scholarship. Papers read at the 100th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 28-30, 1964 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1965) 279-93; Gils Quispel, The Demiurge in the Apocryphon of John, in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis. Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978) 7-9 [art.=1-33].

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possessing an aquatic body, this deity becomes the Demiurge, routinely identified with the biblical creator god. Hans Jonas describes this mythic motif:
(The motif) implies the mythic idea of the substantiality of an image, reflection, or shadow as representing a real part of the original entity from which it has become detachedBy its nature the Light shines into the Darkness below. This partial illumination of the Darkness, if it issued from an individual divine figure such as Sophia or Man, is in the nature of a form projected into the dark medium and appearing there as an image or reflection of the divinethough no real descent or fall of the divine original has taken place, something of itself has become immersed in the lower worldin this way the divine formbecomes embodied in the matter of Darkness176

The point of this myth is well summarized by Werner Foerster who suggests that the totality of Gnosis can be comprehended in a single image. This is the image of gold in Eliphas Levis (d. 1875 ) mud,177 i.e. the divine luminosity enmeshed in the dark depiction of the luminous and sunken aspects of the biblical aqueous matter. According to this myth, the Biblical creator- God. god is somatically associated with both the blue waters and the blue firmament. According to Irenaeus Ophites (Against the Heretics I.30) the luminous Heavenly Sophia (versus here black material counterpart Sophia Achamoth) descended and was entrapped by the waters below, from which she acquired a watery-body. After garnering enough strength (power from the moisture of light), she was able to escape from the waters and re-ascend upwards. She then spread herself out as a covering, her (blue) watery-body serving as the visible heaven.178 She finally abandoned this blue celestial, aquatic body, which then became Yaldabaoth, the God of Israel.179

176 177

Gnostic Religion, 162-3. Gnosis. A Selection of Gnostic Texts, 2 vols. trans and ed. R. McL. Wilson (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1972) 1:

2.

178

A.J. Welburn reads this myth as a commentary on the Ophite Diagram described in Origens contra Celsum VI, 2438. In his reconstruction of the diagram (Reconstructing the Ophite Diagram, NovT 23 (1981): 262-87, esp. 280-87) Welburn associates the blue circle (see contra Celsum VI, 38) with Sophias watery-body of the above myth. 179 Turner, Sethian Gnosticism, 203: her abandoned body fathers the Archon Yaldabaoth; Tuomas Rasimus, Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library, VC 59 (2005): 237 [art.=235-63]: The remains of her body fathered the demiurge Ialdabaoth On various scholarly derivations of the name Yaldabaoth see Joseph Dan, Yaldabaoth and the Language of the Gnostics, in Peter Schfer (ed.), Geschichte, Tradition, Reflexion: Festschrift fr Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996) 557-64 Howard M. Jackson, The Origin in Ancient Incantatory Voces Magicae of Some Names in the Sethian Gnostic System, VC 43 (1989): 69-79; Matthew Black, An Aramaic Etymology for Jaldabaoth? in A.H.B. Logan and A.J.M. Wedderburn (edd.), The New Testament and Gnosis: Essays in honour of Robert McL. Wilson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Limited, 1983), 69-72; Gershom Scholem, Jaldabaoth Reconsidered, in Mlanges dHistoire des Religions offertes Henri-Charles Puech (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974) 405-421; Robert M. Grant, The Name Ialdabaoth, VC 11 (1957): 14849.

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Reflexes of this myth are found in non-Gnostic Jewish sources as well, as pointed out by David Halperin.180 One such reflex, according to Alexander Altmann,181 is in the tale of King David digging pits (shttn) into the earth to build the foundations for the Temple. In the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) version, as David is digging he reaches the subterranean chaos waters (tehom), which arise and threaten to submerge the earth again. After some deliberation with Achitophel, David inscribes the divine name on a sherd and casts it into the deep, thereby staying and sealing Tehom once again. Adducing a number of comparative materials, Altmann argued that the likely history-of-religions background to this haggadah (Jewish tale) is the myth of the primordial man/deity/soul (i.e., the divine name inscribed on the sherd) that fell into the primordial waters. He cites the Naassene Hymn in which the Primordial Man, Adamas, who as the foundation-stone of Zion (Isa. 28:16) and the corner-stone which has become the head of the corner (Ps. 118:22) fell into the watery cosmic matter: This (the talmudic motif) echoes the conception of the Gnostic God who sinks into the depth. Another case was made by Halperin.182 One of the several relevant texts he cites is Re"uyot Yeezkel (Visions of Ezekiel), a possibly fifth century merkabah (chariot-throne) or Jewish mystical text.183 Here Ezekiels vision of God at the river Chebar (Ez. 1-3) is expanded and interpreted. The relevant portion reads:
God opened to Ezekiel the seven subterranean chambers, and Ezekiel looked into them and saw all the celestial entities R. Isaac said: God showed Ezekiel the primordial waters that are bound up in the great sea and in layers; as it is written, Have you come to the layers of the sea [Job 38:16]. He showed him a mountain underneath the river, by means of which the temple vessels will return. While Ezekiel was watching, God opened to him seven firmaments and he saw the Geburah (Power, an epithet for God). They coined a parable: to what may the matter be likened? A man went to a barber-shop, got a haircut, and was given a mirror to look into. While he was looking into the mirror, the king passed by. He saw the king and his forces through the doorway. The barber turned and said to him, Turn around and see the king. He said, I have already seen the mirror. 184 So Ezekiel stood by the river Chebar and looked into the water, and the firmaments were opened to him and he saw Gods glory (kabod), and the ayyot, angels, troops, seraphim, and sparkling-winged ones joined to the merkabah. They passed by in the heavens and Ezekiel saw them in the water. So it is written: At the river Chebar [Ez. 1:1].185

Ezekiel sees in the primordial waters the image/reflection of the divine anthropos enthroned along with his host. As Halperin has seen and as the parable leaves no room to doubt, behind this tale is clearly the myth of the sunken image of the deity. The cited parable distinguishes between the king and the kings image seen in the mirror. The customers declaration, I have already seen the mirror (marah), is a play on mareh, vision/appearance. For him, seeing the image in the mirror is tantamount to seeing the king himself. This word-play also implies some
180

David Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Jewish Responses to Ezekiels Vision (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1988), 211-249. 181 Alexander Altmann, Gnostic Themes in Rabbinic Cosmology, in I. Epstein, E. Levine and C. Roth (edd.), Essays In honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J.H. Hertz: Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew congregations of the British Empire: on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, September 25, 1942 (5703) (London: Edward Goldston, 1944) 19-32. 182 Faces, 211-249. 183 On which see also Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 134-141. 184 Marah, a play on mareh, vision. 185 Trans. in Halperin, Faces, 230.

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sense of identity between the image of the king and the medium (i.e. the mirror). This identity is explicitly articulated in later mystical and esoteric tradition. In zoharic Kabbalah the Shekhinah or Gods visible, blue-black body (Malkhut) is the mirror in which another image (i.e. His luminous image, Tiferet) is seen, and all the upper images (the sefirot) are seen in it186; she is also the Sea (yamah), the waters in which and through which the divine image can be seen.187 As the Sea, the zoharic Shekhinah is symbolized by blue, which color denotes the luminous presence of the divine image (Tiferet) within the dark waters.188 Thus, returning to the Visions of Ezekiel, Halperin reasons:
When the merkabah (=throne) appears in the waters, the upper realms are merged into the lower. Ezekiellooks into the subterranean chambers and sees in them what ought to be in heavenThe paradox of the merkabah in the watersbrings the upper world into the nether world; it makes the distinction between above and below insignificant; it turns the merkabah, like any reflection in water, into part of the fluid and shapeless chaos that God once had to defeat God had indeed, as the old traditions claimed, suppressed the chaos-waters. But chaos had its revenge. The water, by virtue of its power of reflection, ensnared its enemys image, assimilated the merkabah to itself, and thus infected God with its own formlessnessBut Ezekiel saw something else beneath Gods throne: a firmament the color of terrible ice (Ezekiel 1:22). To the early Jewish expositors, I suggest, this meant that God had frozen solid the terrible waters against which he fought, and thus defeated them. By its fluidity and formlessness, chaos is the enemy of order and structurethe hardening of water into glass symbolizes Gods triumph over chaos.189

Halperins words are very significant. Firstly, they indicate that what occurred to the Biblical creator-gods (Yahweh-Elohims) divine body is what had occurred to the Egyptian creator-gods (Atums) divine body:
According to the Book of Amduat, in the fifth hour of the night, the sun god plunged into the primordial waters, out of which creation originally arosethe sun god absorbed the chaotic power of the primordial waters, which engulfed the remnants-flesh-of the once virile solar god.190

Zohar I:149b; MS New York-JTSA mic 1727, fols. 18a-b (quoted in Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 273-4. See also ibid., 310-11). On Shekhina/Malkhut as the visible body of see Zohar III, 152a; Isaiah Tishby in The Wisdom of the Zohar: an anthology of texts, systematically arranged and rendered into Hebrew, 3 vols. by Fischel Lachower and Isaiah Tishby, trns. David Goldstein (London; Washington: The Littman Library of Jewish civilization, 1991), III:1127 n. 30; Moshe Hallamish, An Introduction to the Kabbalah, trans. Ruth Bar-Ilan and Ora Wiskind-Elper (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) 137. On Malkhut and the material body v. also Hopking, Practical Kabbalah Guidebook, 25; Hallamish, Introduction, 137. On the blue-black color see Zohar I, 50b-51b; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar III: 1183; Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir. Translation, Introduction and Commentary (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1989), 153-55; Bokser, The Thread of Blue, 19-21; Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar III: 1183; Gershom Scholem, Colours and their Symbolism in Jewish Tradition and Mysticism (Part II), Diogenes 109 (1980): 67 [art.=64-76]. On the sefirot v. Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 28-59; Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, I:269-307; Elliot K. Ginsburg, The Image of the Divine and Person in Zoharic Kabbalah, in Larry D. Shinn (ed.), In Search of the Divine: Some Unexpected Consequences of Interfaith Dialogue (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987) 61-87. 187 Zohar 1:85b-86a. See Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:351; Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 239-43. 188 Malkhut is symbolized by the color blue, because it is the color of the sea into which the rivers (i.e. the Siferot) are emptied. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:291. 189 Halperin, Faces, 237-8 190 Darnell and Manassa, Tutankhamuns Armies, 22-23.
186

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Secondly, this engulfing of the deitys body with the primordial aqueous matter is symbolized by the thrones (merkabahs) presence in the waters. This is because in Jewish mysticism and esotericism (referred to as ma#aeh merkabah or the Work of the Divine ChariotThrone) the throne is a metonymic reference to the divine body established thereon, just as in Kemet.191 It is thus no surprise at all that the human body is 70% water.

His Throne is ever on the water.

191

C.R.A. Morray-Jones notes: the central mystery of the merkabah tradition: the body of the Glory on the throne. The Body of Glory: The Shiur Qomah in Judaism, Gnosticism and the Epistle to the Ephesians, forthcoming in Christopher Rowland and C.R.A. Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Jewish Mystical Traditions in the New Testament CRINT 3; Assen and Minneapolis: Van Gorcum/Fortress) 99. My thanks to Morray-Jones for providing the author with a manuscript copy. See also Maria E. Subtelny, The Tale of the Four Sages who Entered the Pardes: A Talmudic Enigma from a Persian Perspective, JSQ 11 (2004): 3-58. This point was already made by Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1974) 16: the main purpose of the ascent to the Merkabah is the vision of the One Who sits on the Throne, a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above (Ezekiel 1:26). The appearance of the Glory in the form of supernal man is the content of the most recondite part of this mysticism, called Shiur Komah. On Scholems appeal to Shi#ur Qomah to interpret the Heikhalot/Merkabah texts see the comments by Ira Chernus, Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism, JSJ 13 (1982): 142-3.

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III. The Quran and its Ancient Near Eastern Context/Subtext to understand the Qur"n outside of the Biblical tradition...would seem in the end to place the researcher in a rather ridiculous position.192 So said, correctly, Prof Andrew Rippin. Islam is, among other things for sure, clearly a formulation/articulation of ancient Near Eastern mythological tradition and Rippin rightly insists that the Qur"n in particular be studied in the context of the overall Near Eastern religious milieu which preceded Islams emergence in the 7th century.193 As Aaron Hughes remarks: The Qurn is not only a genizah of various trajectories of biblical and near eastern aggadot (folklore), but also a kaleidoscope which gives these trajectories a new vision.194 Umar F. Abd-Allh confessed as well: Accurate understanding of the pre-Islamic background within which Islm arose is essential to the full understanding of the Islmic religion.195 Ilse Lichtenstadter put it best:
It is no deprecation of Muammads religious fervour to show his deep roots in ancient Near Eastern tradition; it is on the contrary, a tribute to his genius which enabled him to pour new wine into old skins. Neither need we assume direct borrowing from contemporary sources. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Gnosticism and Mandean thought drew their inspiration from the same reservoir of ancient beliefs, each filling them with new meanings through their own peculiar genius. 196

192 193

A. Rippin, The Qur"n as Literature: Perils, Pitfalls and Prospects, BBSMES 10 (1983): 45 [art.=38-47]. Rippin, The Qur"n as Literature, 45. See also idem, God, in Andrew Rippin (ed.), Blackwell Companion to the Qur"n (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006) 225. See also Mondher Sfar, Le Coran, la Bible et lOrient ancient (Paris: Cassini, 1997). Though ancient Arabia is sometimes thought of as religiously isolated from the ANE, archeological and epigraphic evidence for North and South Arabia indicates otherwise. As relatively scant as this evidence is, nevertheless it clearly shows pre-Islamic Arabia to have been within the mythological orbit of the Near East, particularly in terms of motifs of the gods. For example, motifs associated with the cult of baetyls; the motif of the deity and his three hypostatic daughters; the motif of the winged-disk and its tauroform compliment; the divine triad; and of the anthropomorphic god surrounded by his divine assembly, all characteristic of the ANE mythic tradition, were also part of the Arabian mythic tradition as well. See e.g. Werner Daum, Ursemitische Religion (Stuttgart; Berlin; Kln; Mainz: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1985); Hildegard Lewy, Origin and Significance of the Mgn Dwd: A Comparative Study of the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca, Archiv Orientalni 18 (1950) 330-365; Ult Oldenburg, Above the Stars of El: El in Ancient South Arabic Religion ZAW 82 (1970): 187-208; Javier Teixidor, The Pagan God: Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977); Cyrus H. Gordon, The Daughters of Baal and Allah, MW 33 (1943): 50-51; Stephanie Dalley, The God Salmu and the Winged Disk, Iraq 48 (1986): 85-101. 194 Aaron Hughes, The stranger at the sea: Mythopoesis in the Qurn and early tafsr, SR 32 (2003): 266 [art.=61279]. 195 The Perceptible and the Unseen: The Quranic Conception of Mans Relationship to God and Realities Beyond Human Perception, in Spencer J. Palmer (ed.), Mormons & Muslims: Spiritual Foundations and Modern Manifestations (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, 2002) 161 [art.=153-204]. 196 Ilse Lichtenstadter, Origin and Interpretation of Some Qur"nic Symbols, Studi Orientalistic in Onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida 2 (1956): 79-80 [art.=58-80]. On Islam and ancient Near Eastern mythological tradition see also idem, Origin and Interpretation of Some Koranic Symbols, in George Makdisi (ed.), Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A.R. Gibb (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965) 426-36; Geo Widengren, Muhammad, the Apostle of God, and His Ascension (King and Savor Vol. 5) (Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln, and Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955); Cesar E. Dubler, Survivances de lancien Orient dans lIslam (Considerations Generales), SI 7 (1957): 47-75. See also Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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Regarding the Biblical tradition in particular, Roberto Tottoli has emphasized the fact that a number of Qur"nic verses (e.g. 4:163; 42:13; 3:84) present Muammad as the legitimate continuator of the Biblical tradition andthe sole heir of the progeny of the Israelite prophets.197 As John C. Reeves notes the Qur"n places itself within the biblical world of discourse198 and Daniel A. Madigan observes: What is often overlooked in discussing the relationship of Islam to earlier religious traditions is that the Qur"n in effect chooses to define itself in their terms.199 But how exactly are we to define the Qur"ns relation to biblical and Ancient Near Eastern tradition? We encounter within the Qur"n so many biblical characters, themes and parallel narratives that it indeed seems at first sight that Islams scripture could not possibly exist without its scriptural predecessors as subtext.200 The Qur"ns extremely referential nature can be seen as an acknowledgement of this biblical subtext. That is to say, instead of reproducing biblical narratives the Qur"n often gives a truncated version or makes an obscure allusion to a narrative in such a way as to presume on the part of its audience knowledge of the fuller narrative and details.201 But the parallels are not usually exact or the allusions accurate from the perspective of the Biblical text.202 Nineteenth and early twentieth century Orientalists accounted for these divergent parallels by assuming Muammads reliance on Jewish or Christian tutors whose lessons Muammad received poorly. A newer critical approach, however, suggests something very different: that these biblical materials in the Qur"n are indebted not to the biblical text but to local oral, intertextual traditions203 and that the Bible and Qur"n both share and exploit a common layer of discourse.204

Underlying such an approach is the insight from the literary-critical study of the Hebrew Bible that the textus receptus (MT) is but one crystallization of ancient oral tradition, other crystallizations found in the Versions205 as well as extracanonical, exegetical, and apocryphal Biblically affiliated literatures (so-called re-written

197 198

Robert Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qur"n and Muslim Literature (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002) 7. Preface, in John C. Reeves [ed.], Bible and Qurn: Essays in Scriptural Intertextuality [Leiden: Brill, 2004] ix. 199 The Qur"ns Self Image: Writing and Authority in Islams Scripture (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001) 193. 200 Reuven Firestone, The Qur"n and the Bible: Some Modern Studies of Their Relationship, in Reeves, Bible and Qur"n, 2-3. See also Thomas J. OShaughnessy S.J., Gods Throne and the Biblical Symbolism of the Qur"n, Numen 20 (1973): 202-221; Dwight Baker, Islam and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition: The Significance of Quranic and Biblical Parelles (sic), Bangalore Theological Forum 14 (1982): 44-68. 201 Sidney H. Griffith, The Gospel, the Qur"n, and the Presentation of Jesus in al-Yaqbs Tarkh, in Reeves, Bible and Qur"n,134; Firestone, The Qur"n and the Bible, 3; idem, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the AbrahamIshmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany: SUNY, 1990) 6; Andrew Rippin, Interpreting the Bible through the Qur"n, in G. Hawting and A. Shareef (edd.), Approaches to the Qur"n (London and New York: Routledge, 1993) 250-51 [art.=249-59]. 202 For an illustrative case study see Muhib O. Opeloye, Confluence and Conflict in the Qur"nic and Biblical Accounts of the Life of Prophet Ms, Islamochristiana 16 (1990): 25-41. 203 On the overwhelmingly oral culture of the pre-Islamic Hijaz see Michael Swettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978). 204 Vernon K. Robbins and Gordon D. Newby, The Relation of the Qur"n and the Bible, in Reeves, Bible and Qur"n, 42; Reuven Firestone, Abrahams Journey to Mecca in Islamic Exegesis: A Form-Critical Study of a Tradition, SI 76 (1992): 5-24; Marilyn R. Waldman, New Approaches to Biblical Materials in the Qur"n, MW 75 (1985): 1-16. 205 On the ancient Versions of the Bible see ABD 6:787-813 sv. Versions, Ancient.

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Bibles).206 These critical studies of the Hebrew Bible encourage us to understand Biblical tradition as much broader than the canonical Bible and include within it the latter as well as the extracanonical literatures. All of these crystallizations, including the textus receptus itself (i.e. the Bible), represent authentic, independent articulations of a common lore. On this reading, both the Bible and the Qur"n, as well as extracanonical Biblically affiliated literatures, are distinct reifications or articulations of traditional lore that circulated within a shared discourse environment.207 The Qur"n therefore did not borrow from the Bible or biblical literature, rather they both tap and channel a rich reservoir of traditional lore.208 As linguist and Africanist Prof Bernard Leeman points out:
Commentators have linked Muhammads extraordinary career to Christian and Jewish influences, although it is clear that the formative years of his frenetic career was spent largely in interaction with young idealistic Arabs from the merchant class. When Islam first galvanized Byzantine attention after A.D. 632, it was interpreted as Christian heresy but, despite references to Christ and the Virgin Mary, Islam is far removed from Christianitymany of the allusions to the Old and New Testaments do not follow the versions recorded in those booksIt seems that Muhammad was not so much drawing on strong local Jewish traditions but on an ancient common Semitic folk cultureThe overall impression gained from the Quran is of a shared Semitic historical and theological experience.209

Specialists now see that Judaism, Christianity and Islam (which really should be Judaisms, Christianities, and Islams) are not three distinct traditions with a linear relationship of dependence, one to the other. They are three distinct, polyvalent articulations of a common Ancient Near Eastern Semitic tradition. There are commonalities among them, not because they borrowed from each other so throwback this is but because they all tapped and exploited a shared tradition of religious discourse. As specialists know and emphasize, the differences even among the so-called commonalities are far more revealing and defining for these traditions than is their commonalities. To be surprised at these commonalities and to suggest borrowing or any similar concept as the reason for these commonalities is like emphasizing the similarities in the contents in the hands of three people who grabbed a handful of candy from the same bag with different candies in it. In such a case one would expect both variance and commonality, and no one would suggest that the latter is due to one person borrowing candy from another.
206

S. Talmon Textual Criticism: The Ancient Versions, in A.D.H. Mayes (ed.), Text in Context: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 157; Eugene Ulrich, The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures at the Time of Hillel and Jesus, in A. Lemaire (ed.), Congress Volume Basel 2001 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 86-108;idem, The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures Found at Qumran, in Peter W. Flint (ed.), The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (Grand Rapids Michigan and Cambidge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2001) 51-66; idem, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999). See also Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press and Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992); idem, Textual Criticism (OT), ABD 6:393-412. 207 On the Qur"n as such a crystalization see John C. Reeves, Toward a Rapprochement between Bible and Qur"n, Religious Studies News-SBL Edition 2.9 (December 2001) at http://www.sblsite.org/Newsletter/12_2001/ReevesFull.htm. 208 John C. Reeves, Some Explorations of Intertwining of Bible and Qur"n, in idem, Bible and Qur"n, 43; Tryggve Kronholm, Dependence and Prophetic Originality in the Koran, Orientalia Suecana 31-32 (1982-1983): 47-70. 209 Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship (Queensland, Australia: Queensland Academic Press, 2005) 134.

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Judaisms (Plural!!), Christianites (Plural!!) and Islams (Plural!!) are three distinct, polyvalent traditions that are handfuls that drew from the same bag of religious discourse. Kemetic Maat is no different in this regard. It is such that if one werent careful or up-to-date in our conceptions, and if one wanted to (again) invoke throwback categories and ideas, one could say that Maat was a hodge-podge of various traditions. Over its several millennia, the religious tradition of the Nile Valley, especially Kemets portion (from the Mediterranean to the First Cataract), was informed by several distinct traditions, some indigenous to the Valley e.g. Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan and some from Near Eastern immigrants.210 Kemetic religion or spirituality was as much a synthesis or gumbo of distinct religious currents as some want to make Islam out to be. But in making this observation about Kemet, an important point raised by Dr. Mario Beatty must be kept in mind. In discussing the historical conflicts between Egypt and Nubia, Dr. Beatty states:
The most pernicious error that is being made (by scholars discussing Egypt and Nubia) is the consistent disrespect for periodization.

That is to say, people should not conflate the state of things in, say, pre-dynastic Kemet with those of Middle Kingdom Kemet, or conflate the Old Kingdom status quo with the New Kingdom status quo. Things changed over the several millennia and these periodic changes must be respected and accounted for. The same applies with Islam. The point is: Islam in general and the Qurn in particular are part of the Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical traditions. Egyptian tradition was important to both (i.e. ANE and Biblical traditions). We should then expect the Qurn and Islam to show remarkable parallels with Ancient Near Eastern and, specifically, Egyptian tradition. I have demonstrated that Islam and Maat are two fruits from the same African Tree of Spirituality: they are distinct articulations of a common African religious heritage. They can thus both shed light on each other. And as Hava Lazarus-Yafeh keenly observed:
it is impossible to understand (Islamic) literature properly without paying serious attention to its various predecessorsOne should not think in terms of influences or cultural borrowing only, however. It has been said that the Near East resembles a palimpsest, layer upon layer, tradition upon tradition, intertwined to the extent that one cannot really grasp one without the other, certainly not the later without the earlier, but often also not the earlier without considering the shapes it took later.211

Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002); Andrew B. Smith, The Near Eastern connection II: cultural contacts with the Nile Delta and the Sahara, in Lech Krzyaniak, Karla Kroeper and Micha Kobusiewicz (edd.), Interregional Contacts in the Later Prehistory of Northeastern Africa (Pozna, 1996) 29-35; David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 35; Toby Wilkinson, Reality versus Ideology: The Evidence for Asiatics in Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, in Edwin C.M. van den Brink and Thomas E. Lewy, Egypt and the Levant: Interrelations From the 4th through the Early 3rd Millennium BCE (London: Leicester University Press, 2002) 514-520 211 Hava Lazarus-Yahfeh; idem, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) 4.
210

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