The Black Madonna

The Black Madonna of Czestochowa is the oldest surviving marian icon depicting the Virgin Mary with black skin. The origin of this icon is unknown but is at least 600 years old. There are about 500 black Madonnas icons in Europe concentrated mostly in France. Many theories concerning the origins of the black Madonna have been presented but she remains a mystery. Beginning in the 1950's, scholars determined that her resilience as an icon held particular significance for medieval worshipers. The significance of her beautiful black countenance, as this post will show, is a visual testament to her virginity.

Paul says in Corinthians 15; "Fool! That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain; but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes and another of birds." Paul's biology lesson reflects the cutting edge scientific knowledge of his time. And he is not wrong. All living organisms are composed of organic compounds. All matter has come from the remains of once-living organisms and their waste products in the environment. Basic structures are created from cellulose, tannin, cutin, as well as proteins, lipids and sugars. In life, organisms secrete or excrete materials such as faeces into soils, shed body parts such as leaves and, after it expires, its body begins to decompose by a process of bacterial and fungal action.

In religion and mythology serpents represent cyclical life on earth. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they symbolize seasonal change.  The earth renews its skin each year by shedding old vegetation and then sprouting anew. The ouroboros symbolizes the continual renewal of life by devouring its own tail. Each growing season uses the decomposing organic material from the previous cycle to fuel the next cycle of growth. Serpents are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. They also are fierce guardians of temples and other sacred spaces.

The dependence of life on the death of a previous living being is illustrated by the ancient mythology of the Nile inundation. Death is personified by the goddess Maut which means to become one with the Great Mother.  Upon death, the soul merges with the Great Mother Maut and becomes nourishment for the people through her effluence - the Nile River inundation.The ancient Egyptians knew that organic matter in the form of once living creatures, was the sustenance required for the next cycle of life. Hydrology, the study of the movement, distribution and quality of water is from the Sabean Hadhramaut. The Greek Hydra (water serpent) derived from Hadhramaut and associated with artesian water sources, was an ancient serpent-like water beast, with huge fangs and many heads. This myth is more ancient than the Argos and told of the entrance to the underworld with the Hydra as its guardian. The death of the Hydra evinced the botanical lesson of the rhizome; when separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. And like the rhizome, the weakness of the Hydra was that it was invulnerable only if it retained at least one head. After Hercules slew the Hydra, each tooth was planted and spawned a new being. 

It is easy to see why the female reproductive system was compared to a serpent. In eastern religions, the Kundalini snake lies coiled at the base of the spine. It is depicted as either a goddess or sleeping serpent  and its libidinal force or Shakti is instinctive and powerful. The female womb is the sacred space and is guarded by an aspect of the serpent - much like the Hydra guards the entrance to the underworld. This protector is the Goddess of the Tooth (and sometimes claw). Her fierce attributes not only protects the sacred space but is also responsible for devouring the previous season's growth. She is Kali, the sharp fangs of the Great Mother and is depicted as black. Legends say her dark countenance is a result of her genesis before there was light. 

The protective serpent that dwells in each female is the inspiration for the myth of the vagina dentata (vaginal teeth). This legend is a cautionary tale that guards against rape. Its diffusion follows the most ancient Asian migrations; into the Americas and also Europe. The protective fangs of the serpent is reinforced in Ainu culture by the blackening of the teeth. When a girl reaches puberty, her teeth are ceremoniously blackened to announce her rising Shakti. Her black teeth are a visual sign that she is protected by the fierce serpent she carries at the entrance to her womb.

 The European Sheela na gig serves an apotropaic function for entrances to sacred spaces. She warned a largely illiterate populace that lustful acts have consequences. Her exposed genitalia is informing the viewer that the sacred space one is about to enter is guarded by the fangs of the serpent. The lifting of the skirt became a folkloric expression of the Sheela na gig in Medieval Europe. Also, anasyrma or "mooning" may be related to the same ancient myth 

It would seem counter-intuitive that the Goddess of the Tooth should be black. After all, ivory is a synonym for white. To discover the origin of the black serpents tooth one must return to the first known depiction of the serpent Nagas at Catalhoyuk. Here the black goddess is a crone of advanced age. She sits at the fork of two volcanic mountains where the earth extrudes lava (nagas). Aged lava is obsidian and can be flaked to achieve a razor sharp edge. Obsidian is the serpents tooth that protects the sacred space of the underworld. It is also the devourer of antiquity, used to dress game, open bones to expose marrow and, ultimately, in warfare. Obsidian is the technology that transformed the ancient world. It is the Sanskrit Nagas snake extruded from the earth's core. Nagas may be derived from the Naas of the Naassene before the gayin lost the glottal stop of "G". A woman that bares the black coloring of the serpent's tooth is surely a virgin. Her protection is visible for all to see. 

Nagas, therefore, should be the paleo word for "lava" but it is not. Nagas is cognate to "gnaw" - biting but not eating. Biting away at a nugget of obsidian releases the sharp tooth of the serpent from the lava. "Gnathic" means to be related to the jaw but is not describing eating or chewing. "Gnat" is an insect that seems to exist for the sole purpose of biting. "Gnash" and "gash" are also related. The gnashing of teeth may have originally described the process of knapping obsidian. To ancient humans, functionality was surely the most meaningful attribute of language design.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law.
                          - Louis Sullivan



For Kath.

Tehom

The Tihamah is a lowland plain occupying a narrow strip of land along the eastern shore of the Red Sea. Hemmed in by a mountains and high plateau, the Tihamah is extremely hot and humid averaging 110 degrees with 60% humidity. Recent attempts at irrigation has led to the influx of pastoral peoples and their ruminates. This, in turn, has exacerbated sand dune movement due to the elimination of ground cover."Tihama...which has taken in many of the people of Hadramout and Aden. This is Tihama. –  and Zabid. The Ziyoud have even taken the land of the original people of Tihama and the people of Tihama - the true, original Yemenis – now live in huts and shanty towns and they live the lowest and most miserable lives only because they have soft hearts. They don’t know that Yemen in the past was Tihama. The true land of Yumnaat. They don’t know that Abu Musa Al Ash’ari was from Zabid, Tihama and that most religious knowledge and religious people are from Tihama."  From The True Arabs.  

The surrounding mountains are home to the famous Mocha Arabica coffee bean and shipped throughout the world from the Tihamah port of Mokha. Caffea Arabica is a coffee bean plant that originated in the Ethiopian highlands and may be the original cultivated crop. It is not known when the coffee bean plant was introduced to Tihamah but the first historical record of a coffee beverage is from a Sufi religious ceremony in southern Yemen. Ships from India and Africa frequented the Tihamah port of Mocha and Yemenis from Tihamah could be found in cosmopolitan cities throughout India, Africa and Arabia. Marco Polo was said to have "discovered" coffee from a Yemenite vendor in Beirut.

Connections to the Horn of Africa are very evident in the Tihamah. Tukul style huts, identical to the thatched huts of the Ethiopian highlands, are still found here. A site survey of human occupation for this region was completed in 2008 by a coalition of Yemeni Governmental agencies. The survey documented a large number of sites dating to the early holocene containing a significant amount of obsidian tools especially geometric microliths. According to Michael Petraglia in The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia "This microlith assembly can be traced to contemporaneous sites across the Red Sea on Horn of Africa coastal sites". It has not been entirely decided which side of the Red Sea (African or Asian) the Sabaean language originated. However, the Arabic dialect of Tihamah is thought to be the most closely related to the ancient high civilization of Saba.

Tihamah is a semitic word that was probably built from an African root. "The Chadic (a)m(a) or simply *am used as an affix means water. In many Semetic languages, it is also an indication of plurality." (Reseau Mega-Tchad). Perhaps the dual meaning of (a)m(a) is indicative of the understanding that water comes both from above and below. Budge translates the Egyptian word tehem as water. The Akkadian tiham(at) means ocean. Yam is the South Semetic word for sea and appears to include the Chadic *am for water. This word may also reflect the two boundaries of the Red Sea. Yom is the duration of daylight between the morning star and evening star and seems to incorporate the concept of plurality. The lowland plain of the Tihamah does indeed lie parallel to and adjoins the Red Sea. Perhaps this is the etymology of Tihamah.

Another geographical feature that runs parallel to the Tihamah is a fracture zone trough created by the spreading of seafloor plates. The flat plain of the Tihamah extends to the edge of this chasm but with a shallow reef border. This coral reef is interrupted by three sharms each corresponding to an upland wadi. A sharm is natural sand beach that extends seaward in an upside down "V" shape. In other words, the sandy bottom becomes more narrow closer to dry land. However, the sharm does not extend into the chasm.

The Tihamah trough is part of the most prominent topographic feature on the planet - the Mid Oceanic Ridge.  Plate tectonics or continental drift occurs at mid ocean ridges where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then moves away from the ridge. An immense submarine trough and mountain chain system winds it way around the globe like a seam on a baseball. Though mostly hidden beneath the waters of the world's oceans, the mid-oceanic ridge is deeper than the Grand Canyon. The Afar Triangle is the youngest fracture zone on the planet and the only one visible above water. It occurs at the junction of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Tihamah trough.

          Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face

                               of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 

In this verse the word used for deep is tehom. Biblical scholars and linguists unanimously agree that tehom and Tihamha are cognates. Both are derived from a common stem. It is plausible to conclude that the author of Genesis was aware of the Tihamah trough and was absolutely correct in his/her assessment. The earth is continuously being re-created from exactly this location! Another amazing topographical description is without form and void or tohu wabohu. Rabbi Akiva describes tohu as a green line that encompasses the earth. The Mid Oceanic Ridge does, indeed, encircle the earth.

                                    Psalm 74:13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength; thou
                                                        brakest the heads of the tanniyn in the waters.  

Many of the earth's largest sea creatures travel the deep trough of the Mid Oceanic Ridge. Although the Red Sea is very narrow, its deep trough is connected to the depths of the world's oceans. Many deep-sea creatures can be found in the Red Sea. Whale sharks are often encountered by scuba divers. Even snorklers confined to the shallow reef can peer over the edge of the chasm and watch in amazement as the leviathan appears from the bottomless deep. The water is crystal-clear which enables the brave to track a tiny undulating fish from the deep as it comes into sight. It swims up and up... looming larger as it comes closer. Bigger and bigger it grows until the realization dawns that it is ENORMOUS!  Even though the throat of a whale shark is only seven inches wide, the mouth looks entirely capable of swallowing a wayward prophet whole if he should be thrown off a ship.

Khepre

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is introduced in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. It has been suggested by a scholar of ancient languages,Cyrus Gordon, that the phrase "good and evil" is a figure of speech called a merism.  The mirror image of good and evil are used together to create a third entirely new  meaning defined as everything. The tree of knowledge of good and evil becomes the tree of all knowledge.

The mirror image approach to understanding creation is known as dualism and is a consistent theme in religion and philosophy. Symmetry is dualism's biological mirror image for which a tree is also an excellent metaphor. The trunk of the tree represents the connection of the mirrored halves and is the conduit between the two sides. The Cabbalistic Tree of Life (Sephirot) is a symmetrical network cabled together by a central trunk. Its redundant connections could be compared to the human brain. Kaphal is the Hebrew word for doubling and folding or making two out of one. It is surely the origin of kephale the Greek word for head which would make kaphal the origin of many words describing cephalization.Trees connect sky and earth, life and death, moisture and dryness and men to the divine. They are vascular plants and have veins that move water and nutrients throughout their structures. Xylem veins run from the roots throughout the entire tree to carry nutrients from the soil. Phloem sap is created at the leaves during photosynthesis and travels down to the roots.

The ancient Egyptian representation of the head is Khepre with the dung beetle (Scarabaeidae) as his totem. His job is to protect Ra on his journey through the night time underworld. Khepre means "to come into being" and came to represent the sun at dawn. During the night hours the sun is "hidden within" the dark beetle. Kaphir is a word that means black and must originate from this cephalic totem. Sephir of the Cabbalistic Sephirot may ultimately originate with this beetle. Khepre is also the ancient Egyptian word for hinna, a plant harvested for lawsone. Lawsone is a dark organic compound that binds with protein and has been used since antiquity as a dye. Men dyed their beards and women their fingernails with hinna and was considered a sunnah (fortunate) by Prophet Muhammad saaw.

The pineal gland is located in the center of the brain and secretes a dark hormone called melatonin. It is the Regulator-in-Chief of all secreted hormones including the female menstrual cycle. The pineal  releases melatonin during the dark hours and plays a critical role in the sleep cycle. Circadian rhythm, governed by the pineal, duplicates the movement of the sun. The dualistic approach the ancient Egyptians used to understand natural laws placed Ra in the center of the cephalic vault during the night.

It is easy to make a comparison between the scarab beetle shell and the human skull. The dung beetle has a hard outer layer protecting a hemolymphic circulatory system and the grooves are similar to the sutures of a skull. The job of Khepre was to protect Ra on his journey through the underworld as the skull protects the important matter within. Noah was protected during the flood by an ark built of kopher wood.  Kopher means to "cover over or to house something" and is also the word used for pitch. Pitch is a resin made from petroleum and possibly tree sap and was used in antiquity to waterproof boats.The word khepre may originate with the tree Noah used to build his ark. Cypress is a tree from which sap is collected and is used as the translation of kopher.

Linguists agree that is copper is a word related to Cyprus/cypress. They have decided that the metal was named for the island. However, copper ore was being mined in the Rift Valley on an industrial scale long before the island developed a high civilization. The earliest records relating to Cyprus dates to the middle Bronze age. Perhaps copper  is derived from the  from the ancient name for the bipennis, the Cretin version of Khepre. Bipennis means doubled wing and was used as a scepter by the Regulator-in-Chief. Bipennis and pineal, as well as pinia and pine, are ultimately derived from the same Hebrew root word Panah which means to "turn and face". Its derivatives are used to describe the Presence of God and the worship thereof.

Kherev is the Hebrew word for sword and originates with a word meaning to "divide into two halves". It must also be related to carob and cherub which are words related to scarab. The dual cherubim covered the Mercy Seat of the Arc of the Covenant with their wingspan. They were formed from one blank of bronze without any seams. Other related words are crab (creature with hard shell), karibu (Akk.one who blesses), grub (larvae of beetle), scorpion and groove.

Ultimately, the winged Khepre, the Bipennis, the Cherubim and Scarab are all derived from the corpus collosum;  the abode of the Regulator-in-Chief. It is a wide bundle of neural cables beneath the cortex along the longitudinal groove. It connects the the doubled wings of the cerebrum (another sword word) and facilitates communication between the two hemispheres. This configuration may explain why humans interpret the world in a dualistic manner. We compare, contrast and create using the building blocks of earlier comparisons. Our amazing bipennate brain needs to compare heaven to earth to create the words that describe what we discover. Language is more than the croaking of frogs - even if they are the northern European variety.

Veil of the Horizon

The ancient Egyptians used basin irrigation in their agricultural practices which not only watered but naturally fertilized their fields. The Nile River is the lower watershed of the Ethiopian highlands and the recipient of mineral enriched sediment that amends the topsoil. In ancient times, the Nile would create a floodplain to a depth of 1.5 meters. In mid July the river began to rise gently in the south and reached flood stage at the first cataract in mid August. The flood would then surge northward and reach the end of the valley about five weeks later. The farmers would capture the sediment by enclosing plots of land with dikes. The flood water was held fast giving the fertile silt and sediment time to settle. The surplus water would then be returned to the watercourse by breaching the dikes. July 17th is still celebrated as the "Night of the Drop" when the celestial tear fell and the Nile began to rise. Tatenen was the totem of this cyclical inundation and may be translated as "Realm of the Rising Mounds." The hieroglyph of Tatenen is accompanied by the sign for cloth.


In prehistoric Egypt, the watercourse of the flood would have evolved through the agricultural practices of farmers. Mounding the topsoil onto higher ground and digging ravines for water drainage would have eventually created permanent canals. The perennial flood waters would have traveled the same course both rising and receding.This circulating watercourse may have been called a kikker. "And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the kikker of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar."  The floodplain of Jordan, although contained because of mountain ranges on each side, would fit the description of basin irrigation. However, because of the rapid descent of the River Jordan (Jordan means the descender) sedimentation would have soon been depleted. Unlike the Nile kikker, farmers of the Jordan floodplain would have had to eventually amend the soil. The floodplain in Guyana is similar to the Nile watershed and is farmed by descendants of African slaves. They call their basin irrigation system a koker which corroborates the definition of the similar kikker.


After the Nile began to recede, the dikes would be breached allowing the excess water to drain. The sun would dry the soil enough so that the plowing and planting could begin. A plausible word used to describe dike breaching is the Hebrew word shalaish which has cognates meaning to set seed. The definition of shalaish is "striking repeatedly" and/or "to impale." The rim of the dike would be slashed repeatedly and impaled with farming implements to create a ditch for the water to escape. A slow flow would be desirable so that valuable sediment remains in the basin. There is a noticeable similarity of shalaish and slash but also to shalosh the Hebrew word for three. Three slash marks is a ubiquitous symbol with a meaning lost to antiquity. Perhaps it represented breaching the dikes and release of water. 


After the crop harvest, an important task would have been to repair the breaches in the dikes. The predictable flooding required advanced planning to prepare for the next cycle of sediment capture. An inevitable invention would have been a sluice gate. A sluice gate precludes the need for the repeated slashing and building back up of the basin embankment. Another benefit would be the ability to regulate the amount of water released. With a sluice gate installed, the dike could be permanently fortified and unintentional breaching could be deterred. Sluice and shalosh may have both evolved from shalaish. Watching the operation of a sluice gate, the word slice also comes to mind.


The single most important connection between heaven and earth was the moisture delivery system. Famine, disease and death were directly correlated to an absence of water. Understanding and controlling the water cycle was the foremost duty of the priestly class. They compared the heavens to the earth (as well as the human body) and tried to control hydrology by the obsessive creation of rituals. The priests interpreted the heavens as a kikker and releasing water must be through a similar device. Stars were the sluice gates of heaven and must be tears in the fabric of the firmament. Opening the sluice gates of heaven required ritual that focused on the body of the Pharaoh - especially in death. Celestial is another shalaish word and comes from the Greek word for heavenly bodies.  A tear (water droplet) comes from the tear (laceration) but linguists say there is no connection. Tear and slash have about the same meaning.

The cloth of Tatenen was viewed as the earthly fabric of the kikker woven from one thread without any seams. Likewise, the continuous flow of the Nile was one thread that carried the life-giving silt and sediment throughout all farmland. Weaving with one thread could more accurately be described as or knitting or tatting. Weaving requires both warp and weft threads but tatting depends upon one continuous flow of yarn. If the Pharaoh was to be the pure light then the"veil of the horizon" (wrappings) would need to be tatted. Tait was the goddess responsible for mummy wrappings and also the fine linens that clothed the votive statues. Woven cloth is relatively rigid whereas tatted "lace" or intarsia is flexible, can be drawn closed or stretch when filled. Supermarkets sometimes provide tatted shopping bags that stretch to accommodate produce but shrink closed when empty. 

The Wab priests were also known as Priests of Purity performed their duties in pristine linen. They were closely associated with Tait and were responsible for the health of the Pharaoh. Their primary duty, or at least, their only duty that can be confirmed, is to retrieve the bat to be used in an unknown potion. The bat was probably the Egyptian fruit bat or Egyptian Rousette. This bat had to be retrieved on the correct day at the correct hour supposedly to achieve the most benefit to the potion. The Rousette is proven to be the pollinator of the hinna plant called Khepre by the ancient Egyptians. The Edenic name of this bat is atalleph and is cognate to many words that mean to suspend. 


The Rousette would be an appropriate totem for the suspended veil that divides heaven and earth. In fact, it does appears to be the creature depicted on the Was Scepter.  In some iterations of this scepter, tear drops or rain is cascading down the shaft. In other funerary art, the Was Scepter is shown holding up the night sky. The striking resemblance to a tatting hook make the Was Scepter a fitting totem for the goddess Tait to tat the Veil of the Horizon.

Kalakala

The Kalakala (kah-LAK-ah-lah) is a unique art deco ferry boat that operated on the Salish Sea and Puget Sound from 1935 until 1967. In 1933, the vessel was sold to the Puget Sound Black Ball Line and refit to operate as a ferry. It was a popular tourist attraction during the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle. The Kalakala was issued FCC license #001 for the first commercial radar system. 


In 1967 the vessel was sold to a seafood processing company and towed to Alaska to work as a crabbing ship. After a time the Kalakala was beached in Kodiak and used to process shrimp and as a cannery. In 1998, she was rediscovered  and, after complicated financial negotiations, the ship was re floated and towed back to Seattle by the fearless Holly James. However, since sufficient funds could not be raised for her refurbishment, she languished in Seattle's Union Bay until she was evicted. Next, the Maakah First Nation people of Neah Bay took pity on her and allowed the Kalakala to be moored free of charge in a tribal harbor.  

Kalakala means seagull in Chinook Jargon, a "creole" language created from native Pacific Northwest dialects for use in trade with the "Anglo" people. It was said of her gleaming hull that she looked like a seagull sitting on the water. Seagulls do not have a good reputation in the coastal Northwest. They are very noisy scavengers and tend to indiscriminately deposit bird droppings. They are also carrion eaters and are often seen fighting over the smelliest fish carcass. The Black Ball Line understandably wanted their vessel to be known as the Silver Swan but it was the name Kalakala that has endured. 

The native tribes of the Northwest are concentrated around coastal regions and estuaries. Their culture is intimately connected to the sea and inland waterways. Historically, each tribe occupied an economic niche that exploited natural resources while not infringing on the food sources of other tribes. An exception would be during salmon runs when the plenitude allowed everyone to take as much as they could cure. The Maakah people of Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula were seal and whale hunters. They would await the yearly whale migration at the Seiku bluff and could immediately tell which specie had arrived by their seal point. 

At the notification by the lookout the Maakah men would rush to their canoes and paddle out to intercept the whale. Their highly structured society was built on status achieved at these whale hunts. One hunter would harpoon the whale with a device that was attached to a seal skin float. This float was filled with air and slowed the behemoth and kept it from deep diving. More floats would be attached until the whale tired and eventually stopped swimming. At this point, a high-status young man or a man wishing to achieve a higher status, would jump into the freezing water with the dying leviathan and sew the mouth shut. This was to prevent the whale from taking on water and sinking. What an amazing connection these people must have had with the sea and its inhabitants!


There has not been much ethnographic research regarding these tribes or their myths and legends. As a matter of fact, their burial rites and other cultural practices have been historically met with contempt. When an area bridge needed to be rebuilt, it was discovered that the area the old pylons had been built was back-filled with bones from an ancient burial ground. How did these people dispose of their dead? Anecdotal evidence shows that each tribe may have had very different methods. 


Jim Trainer, an arborist in the ancestral Suquamish tribal area has found burials sites inside massive tree trunks. Canoes containing bones were interred inside living trees as if they were to become part of its continued growth. It is not known if only certain individuals achieved this rite or if only select trees received this honor. Tree burials immediately call to mind the myth of Osiris who was embedded in the trunk of a tree. Also, Egyptian barqs were buried near Pharaohs tombs for his journey through the underworld. Perhaps these ancient people had a similar view of the afterlife? Finding an area on the coast where a human could be buried underground would be a daunting task. Glaciation has laid down a deep stratum of hardpan clay soil that is denser than concrete. A much more practical and culturally significant method would be to lay the deceased in a canoe and float it out to sea. Other peoples connected to the sea have adopted this method. If so, the body would undoubtedly be excarnated by seagulls and, therefore, returned to the sea for fulfillment of the cycle. In the cultures of the Red Sea, the completion of this cycle is called Sheva or Saba. 

 It is now time for the Kalakala to complete her cycle. She deserves to be allowed to lie on the floor of the sea to become a home for fish fry and other sea creatures. It is so sad to see the once proud vessel list in the mud of Foss waterway. Please, Steve Rodriquez, end her suffering. Let the Kalakala go to her eternal resting place on the ocean floor.

The Reed Sea

Exodus is the story of the Israelites' journey to freedom from slavery. The central drama is crossing the Red Sea which was made possible by a miraculous parting of the waters. Throughout history, the exact location of the crossing has been hotly debated and centers on the translation of the name of the body of water. Red Sea is a direct and undisputed translation of the Greek name Erythra Thalassa which may simply be the Greek color-identifier for a southern sea.  The original Hebrew name, Yam Suph, has been translated as Reed Sea and has no etymological connection to Erythra Thalassa.

Biblical scholars have theorized that the Exodus story was based on an ancient psalm entitled Song of the Sea found embedded in the Jawist source of Torah. According to this song, the original incident clearly places the crossing in the Gulf of Aqaba. The references to the "Edomites, Moabites and inhabitants of Philistia" make this identification certain. The map above does not show the Gulf of Aqaba so perhaps Greek speakers did not have a frame of reference for this arm of the Red Sea.

When it was widely disseminated that Yam Suph translates to Reed Sea, everyone turned their attention elsewhere to find this sea of reeds. While papyrus thrives in brackish water, the Gulf of Aqaba is much too salty to sustain any form of shoreline vegetation. In ancient depictions, the lakes of the Nile delta were choked with many species of reeds and popular opinion moved the location of the Yam Suph nearer to ancient Egypt. However, other biblical passages place the Yam Suph in the Gulf of Aqaba and it is never associated - in scripture - with the Nile delta. In Exodus, the Hebrews quit Goshen and Ramses; assumed to be places in the region of the Nile. The ancient Egyptian sphere of influence went far beyond the Nile river and delta area. Evidence shows that the Egyptians were involved in copper mining throughout the Sinai, Negev and Jordan Valley. Wadi Faynan in Jordan and the Timna mines north of Eilat, Israel are two examples. Egyptian scarabs, aegides of Maut and images of Hathor have been discovered at these locations. The copper deposits in the Faynan and Timna districts belong to the same family of rock-hosted mineral deposits. Host rocks are part of Early Cambrian lagoonal strata and both sites are geologically identical.

The Gulf of Aqaba, Arava and Dead Sea of the Great Rift Valley divide the Arabian and African plates of the supercontinent Gondwanaland. The Sinai Peninsula is part of the African plate and has historically been administratively controlled by Africans. Slave labor and complex supply chains for the ancient bronze market would have required a powerful and organized controller of people. Industrial scale copper smelting at the Rift Valley sites has been ongoing for 5,000 years. In the early and and middle Bronze Age, it was the Egyptians that had the military might to exploit and control an industrial operation. A powerful Egyptian colonial power subjugating an indigenous Rift Valley populace could produce enough smelted copper to supply the entire ancient world! If Hebrew speaking slaves quit Goshen and Ramses, then the copper mines of the Rift Valley could not be eliminated as their point of departure.

Fluvial Geomorphology is the study of river related landforms. The FG of the southern Arava was perennial meandering streams 7,500 years ago. In Water, Life & Civilization: Climate, Environment and Society in the Jordan Valley, the data suggests "wet conditions requiring an excess of precipitation over evaporation." Rainfall 7.5 ka BP may have been as high as 800 mm per year. Surveys of pollen show that the Faynan region was on the southern edge of the Mediterranean Forest Zone with "C4 sedge (papyrus) becoming the dominant plant in the south". Arava means willow and the paleosol record has periods of calcrete nodule formation. Calcretions are formed by a simultaneous increase in temperature and rainfall which may have been aided by a canopy of water-soaking willows.

The Rift Valley is a narrow tube hemmed in on both sides by mountain ranges until it reaches Sharm el Sheik in the Sinai. Sea water fills the deep crevice in the south and silt fills in the central Arava.Water would have a hard time escaping this tub/tube because of the concave topography. A picture is emerging of an ancient valley swampland giving way to trees in higher elevations. Papyrus would have choked the lowland and become a natural barrier between Africa and Arabia as was the Gulf of Aqaba. Traveling northward, the swamp becomes willow and sycamore and finally hardwood forests of the Mediterranean Forest Zone. The Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee were combined into one body of water which was replenished by the Hermon snow melt.

The rapid desertification of this region is profound compared to similar ancient population centers. The Faynan industrial complex could be the reason. The amount of charcoal required for the furnaces of the bronze age surely contributed to deforestation. Locating the copper mines on the southern boundary of a forest zone would be a convenient source of fuel.. Slaves to work the mines could be obtained from local people but would be hard to control. The sea of papyrus would have been a welcoming refuge for escaping slaves or those that did not want to become the property of the Pharaoh. The chariots and horses of the Egyptian state would be useless in the impenetrable suph.

Moses had sojourned in Midian (Arabia) and so was familiar with the mountain passages as well as the suph sea. He had to cross it in his escape after murdering an Egyptian. A man traveling through suph would be hidden by walls of reeds and sound would be baffled. Having a common Egyptian enemy may have united escaping slaves so that they gave assistance to others in similar situations.One important way to help would have been to show them the hidden passages through the suph sea. Symbols for pathways could easily be translated into lines for mapping of escape routes. 

Teba is a reed word that may be from tef (tsuf, suph, chufa) and is used to build words that are "unsinkable". Reeds stand high above the water, can be hollow and, when bundled together, can hold a man afloat. Tub and tube may be words stemming from the unsinkable word for the ark of Moses - teba. As a baby, Moses had been found floating in a teba amongst the suph of the Nile. Another teba was the floating ark of the deluge. Noah floated his household and livestock so they would not sink. The Akkadian tabalu is a continent which was thought to float above the primordial water. Syriac tabayl is the "world fit for habitation" or that which would not sink. Table and tablet must also originate from teba. Moses knew the hidden roads and topography from tablets of reed writing (Arabic k'tob). Since he had sojourned here before he knew where the sea floor was gently sloping and where it dropped off into the chasm of the tehowm. Moses seems to have lured the Egyptians into the water and perhaps the charioteers were not familiar with the area and did not know about the crack in the earth.

There is such a place in the Gulf of Aqaba. It has a gently sloping shoreline but then suddenly drops off into a deep crevice. It is called Taba and is the ancient name given to the place where the suph met the abyss of the tehowm. Taba is located on the ancient edge of the tub of suph. Perhaps this is precisely where the Israelites entered the water and so has always been remembered as the place of the unsinkable Taba.

Leech

The Edenic root of leech combines two sub-roots, LaK (moisture) and KHaiKH (palate), with the mem prefix (from, by). The letters of these two words are used to build the Hebrew word LaKaKH; to lick. The English word lick is also a double guttural and was surely created from the Edenic combination of moisture and palate. Newborns lick their mother’s teat to stimulate lactation flow (*GO!). Mammalian mothers lick their infants periodically to stimulate nursing. Licking also stimulates healing of open wounds. Milk sounds like it should originate from this word but linguists disagree.

The feline Bastet was the lower Egyptian Goddess of pregnant women and medicinal ointments. The alabaster jar on the left is an example of the finely crafted jars for medicinal purposes. The etymology of alabaster is ultimately derived from Bastet and refers to the mineral calcite, a carbonate of calcium. This Egyptian mineral was mined extensively in Egypt and many ancient quarries have been found in the hills overlooking the plain of Tell el Amarna. After unification with upper Egypt, Bastet was associated only with the domestic cat and Sekhmet took over the role of lioness. Both were seen as protectors of the Pharaoh from disease supposedly because cats kill rats and rats carry disease. Since the association of rats to disease via fleas was not discovered until the 18th century this theory is highly unlikely.

The mirror image of pregnancy and healing is death and disease. Sekhmet became the representative of both after the unification of upper and lower Egypt. Both Bastet and Sekhmet had temples constructed in the middle of sacred Isheru lakes much like the Great Mother Maut. Both feline goddesses were closely associated with Maut who was the source of all earthly moisture. However, the majority of statuary in all of Egypt is a depiction of Sekhmet. Seven hundred granite Sekhmet statues have been uncovered in Thebes alone. Many more statues made of calcite have dissolved away because it is one of the more water soluable salts. Perhaps the intended melting of these statues was a form of alchemy to summon the healing moisture. The licking lioness representing all death and disease would melt away and with her all the illnesses of her worshipers.

Melt may be ultimately derived from the same source of the Edenic word for sodium chloride or salt; melach. Melach means to vanish or pass away and salt is a rock that dissolves. Mollusks melt with salt and so may be derived from this word. Molting is the passing away of feathers. Smelting is melting with fire.

Although Sekhmet usually appeared naked, her breasts were always adorned with rosettes. Egyptologists have traced this back to the hair whorls on lions but another rosette of naturally occurring calcite exists in Egypt. This desert rose is found deep in caves considered to be the lair of Maut. The symbolism of rosette breasts is very clear; melt is the milk of Sekhmet.

Licking wounds to accelerate healing is common to all mammals except those that are fully or semi-aquatic. Perhaps the old English word for healer or physician (leace) shares a common origin with lick. At least it is agreed that leace is the origin of the modern English word leech. Linguists admit they do not know the origin of leace, therefore, I am permitted to suggest the Edenic LaKaKH. Leeching describes the process of attaching blood sucking worms on specific areas of the body to promote healing. Paintings of medicinal leeches have been found in Pharaohs’ tombs so this treatment was known to the ancient Egyptians. The Solomon Parables describe leeches for treatment of wounds and the Roman physician Galen advocated leech therapy to achieve a healthy balance of humors. Medicinal leeches have made a modern day comeback in microsurgery to combat venous insufficiency. Small veins sometimes cannot be reconnected resulting in the death of tissue. The leeching action draws oxygenated blood through the damaged section and at the same time prevents swelling caused by coagulation.

Linguists have determined that leech did not enter the English vernacular until 1784. Since leeches were surely around before that date they must have been known by another name. Wyrm was probably used to describe all creatures that motate without the benefit of arms or legs. Etymology Online says, “wurm, variant of wyrm, serpent – dragon.  Perhaps it is the leech that is climbing the Rod of Asclepius.