Egyptians, Niger-Congo, Mande, Ethiopian

An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any. From such a homeland, a westward Mande migration may have begun well over 5000 years ago. Perhaps the earliest division within this group resulted in the isolation of what is now represented only by Bobo-fing.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs & Mande symbol

Somewhat later— perhaps 3500 to 4500 years ago, and possibly from a new homeland around northern Dahomey [now Benin]— the ancestors of the present Northern-western Mande peoples began pushing farther west, ultimately reaching their present homeland in the grasslands and forests of West Africa.

This was followed by a gradual spread of the Southern-Eastern division, culminating perhaps 2000 years ago in the separation of its to branches and the ultimate movement of Southern Mande peoples southeast and westward until Mano and Kpelle, long separated, became once more contiguous. (pp. 119-120) (emphasis mine). The image to the right has Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the left and Mande symbol on the right.

We have to remember that the Greek historian informs us what the Egyptians told him directly concerning their origins and customs. We are told by Diodorus that: They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony…And the larger part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold Ethiopian, the colonists still preserving their ancient manners.

For instance, the belief that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters of similar nature are Ethiopian practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their letters are Ethiopian; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is known as "popular" (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called "sacred" is understood only by the priests of the Egyptians, who learn it from their fathers as one of the things which are not divulged, but among the Ethiopians everyone uses these forms of letters.

Furthermore, the orders of the priests, they maintain, have much the same position among both peoples; for all are clean who are engaged in the service of the gods, keeping themselves shaven, like the Ethiopian priests, and having the same dress and form of staff, which is shaped like a plough and is carried by their kings, who wear high felt hats which end in a knob at the top and are circled by the serpents which they call asps; and this symbol appears to carry the thought that it will be a lot of those who shall dare to attack the king to encounter death-carrying stings.

Many other things are also told by them concerning their own antiquity and the colony which they sent out that became the Egyptians, but about this, there is no special need of our writing anything.
In other words, the Egyptian culture is the Kushite culture (Ethiopian) of Chad/Sudan as acknowledged by the Egyptians themselves. Even Champollion, that deciphered the hieroglyphs, understood this point.

This would explain why the Kongo-Saharan symbols, along with the words to go with them, became the foundational symbols of the emerging Egyptian language. There are many theses concerning the origins of the Niger-Congo language family with many having them originate west of Lake Chad. I find many of these theories untenable for reasons beyond the scope of our current discourse. But even if we did accept that hypothesis, one couldn‘t deny the fact that Niger-Congo (and Proto-Bantu) speakers were in the Nile Valley as evidenced by the Sumerian data. The Sumerian language has been proven, by way of the comparative method, to be a Niger-Congo language.

Four principle works help to establish this fact: W. Wanger, Comparative Lexical Study of Sumerian and Ntu (“Bantu”): The Sumerian Sanscrit of the African Ntu Languages (1935); Robin Walker, When We Ruled (2006); GJK Campbell-Dunn Sumerian Comparative Dictionary & Sumerian Comparative Grammar (2009); and Hermel Hermstein Black Sumer: The African Origins of Civilization (2012). Hermstein (2012: 85-98) posits an eastern migration of Niger-Congo (Proto-Bantu) speakers, originating from Lake Chad, passing through Sudan, settling in Somalia, then working their way up to present-day Iraq.