Egyptology reviewed in the light of the Berber language
Egyptology reviewed in the light of the Berber language
In a study on the toponymic systems of Ancient Egypt, initiated in 2012 by several leading Western universities, researchers in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Coptic and Arabic were asked to try to provide answers to the toponymy of place names ‘due to the different cultures that succeeded one another in Egypt’. Twelve years have gone by and still no answers have been found. In our opinion, this lack of results is mainly due to the fact that Berber language researchers were not invited.
The fascinating civilisation of Pharaonic Egypt has interested generations of historians, archaeologists, and astronomers since antiquity. This interest has not waned in the present day, since the greatest universities in the Western world, such as Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Paris-Sorbonne, Montpellier, Turin and Toronto, have chairs of Egyptology where the various aspects of the civilisation of this country are studied, whose inhabitants have defined themselves, from time immemorial to the present day, as the Mis-Ra, which in Berber means ‘sons of the divinity Ra’.
Archaeologically speaking…
The origins of this civilisation have given rise to various interpretations as to where the people who occupied the N’il valley came from. The majority of historians have maintained that the human source came from the East, while others, such as G. Germain and Y./C. Gauthier, have made a link between Ancient Egypt and the Berber world, citing the ancient belief in the ‘cult of the spheroid ram’, in the case of the former, and the location from the Atlantic to the Red Sea of ‘more than 6,000 Libyan-Berber cave sites, which are, among other things, excellent indicators of the presence of these populations, as they define, better than historical texts, the limits of this Berber-speaking domain through the ages’, in the case of the latter.
Despite these archaeological indicators, almost all historians and Egyptologists have erected a dogmatic wall between Ancient Egypt and the Berber world, drawing an imaginary border through the Berber-speaking oases of Siwa and Qara. In a book entitled L’épopée berbère.
Des hommes préhistoriques aux bâtisseurs des pyramides (From prehistoric man to the builders of the pyramids), the author of these lines gives a new vision of the history of the Amazighs. In it, he argues that tribes of hunter-gatherers migrated eastwards, appropriated the great river and named it N’il, a diminutive of Nath-il (those of the river), not without first giving a name to the body of water to the south: Assouane, which in Berber means they drank, in memory of the erg Issaouène (Algeria), which they had been forced to leave following the serious climatic crises that occurred towards the end of the Palaeolithic period.
In support of his hypothesis, he cites S. Seidlmayer, who places the origins of the settlement of Egypt in the early Palaeolithic: ‘The discovery of stone tools in the Nile Valley places the traces of human settlement in the early Palaeolithic.
At that time, Egypt did not display the characteristics of a singular culture. We had to wait until the Final Palaeolithic, between 25,000 and 10,000 BC, to find the first evidence of it. A period of extreme drought led the hunter-gatherers who had been roaming the savannahs of the Sahara to reach the river, which was still weak and irregular, to find their means of subsistence.
… etymological and linguistic
The occupation of the N’il valley by these Berber tribes has left indelible traces in the toponymy of these places, since it is commonly accepted that the original names of places or watercourses generally refer to the identity of their population. In fact, the name of a place permanently fixes a specific geographical area, be it a mountain, hill, plain or river. Over time, it is a historical record of our past. The place name transcends time and refers back to the first occupants of the site.
In popular parlance, the Egyptians still refer to themselves as the Mis-Ra, but this name is not unique to Egypt, since it originated in Algeria, where the Ait Mis-Ra tribe has lived in the Blidean Atlas near Bouinan since the earliest times, as has the commune of Mesra near Mostaganem.
While the meaning of the word Mis is self-evident to a Berber, the diminutive Ra, with the gh swallowed, is less obvious. Ra is a diminutive of the word awragh, which in Berber means yellow, blond, golden and, by extension, sparkling. It was the first name borne by the Berber Saint-Augustin and gave rise in Latin to the first name Aurélien, which has the same meaning.
The similarity with the Berber toponym does not end there. The name of the great river Nile also refers to Algeria, where a wadi with the same name flows near Jijel. N‘ is the pronoun of belonging, found in both the north and south of the Maghreb and central Sahara, such as Adrar N’ Djer Djer (Djurdjura), Tassili N’ Ajer…
The word ‘il’ refers to the watercourse or river. It’s also worth noting that the Berber name for the oleander is ‘ilili’, in which the root ‘il’ is found, since this plant grows naturally alongside watercourses. In Egyptian cosmogony, water was elevated to the rank of a god called Amen (literally, water). This explains why N’il was also called ‘Yethro’, which in Berber means ‘he weeps’, because when the god Amen weeps, his tears flow in an uninterrupted stream.
For those who might be tempted to think that this is just a coincidence, we have noted other Berber-sounding place names. For example, the city of Thinis, which was the capital of the first pharaonic dynasty (3150 BC), is the Greek deformation of Ténès (Algeria) or Tunis, which means ‘camp’ or ‘bivouac’ in Berber.
The first pharaoh of this dynasty was called Menes. As vowels do not exist in hieroglyphic writing, this is the Greek deformation of Amen-es: his waters or owner of the waters. This name is also found in the Algerian Sahara in a place called In Amenès.
And that’s not all. The 3rd pharaoh of this same dynasty was called Djer, which means great, giant.
This name is still found in Algeria in Adrar N’Djer-Djer and Oued Djer (south of Algiers) as well as in Tassili N’A(d)jer where Mount Am-Djer exists, literally like a giant. Not having forgotten their origins, these tribes of hunter-gatherers even gave the name of Mezghouna to a locality, which over time became a town 40 km south of Cairo, not far from the pyramid attributed to Amen-emhat IV. This name is derived from the word ‘Amazigh’, which is also found in Algeria, in the Mezghena forest near Tablat, and also near Algiers, where the Nath Mezghena and Mizrana tribes lived in Kabylia.
Memphis was one of the most important cities in the history of ancient Egypt. It is the Greek deformation of Amen-Efer, which means ‘sheltered from the waters’ in Berber. Manetho, the priest historian of the pharaonic dynasties, recounts that the city was founded by the pharaoh Amenès, who demanded that his capital be built sheltered from the waters of the N’il around 3000 BC.
Amen means waters and Efer means hidden, and by extension protected. The names Ifri, Tafraoui and Frenda (they hid there) (Algeria), Ifran and Yefren (Morocco, Libya) are all derived from the word Efer and refer to the cave, which naturally provides shelter.
Ramses II wanted to reconstitute, to the north, in the N’il delta, the Thebes of the South, the city of temples where the Egyptians went on pilgrimage to wash away their sins (the origin of the word ‘thebe’ in Arabic). The place chosen for this new city was called Tanis (Ténès), which must have been an ancient encampment to have kept this name.
This city was the birthplace of the kings of the 21st dynasty and its name is mentioned in the Bible in Psalms, verses 12 to 43, for having been the place of Moses’ miracles. Over time, Tanis became airborne, which led to its decline. As a result, it was abandoned and took the name of Djanet, which means ‘abandoned’ in Berber, just as our own Djanet was (Algeria) following the severe climatic crises.
A new field of study for Egyptology
According to some Egyptologists, who are fond of legends, the name Egypt (Aiguptos) is linked to the myth of King Aegyptos, son of Belos and Anchinoe, who conquered the land and gave his name to the country. The reality is quite different. The ancient city of Gebtou, built 40 km north of Thebes, became Coptos over time, when Greek civilisation took over.
The name Gebtou, deformed into Aegyptos by the Greeks, is the origin of the name of this country, although its inhabitants have always defined themselves as Mis-Ra. The town of Coptos was home to many quarry workers, stonemasons, and craftsmen. This contributed to its reputation, as its workforce was in great demand in both the North and South.
By Khelifa Mahieddine
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