Duat, Igbo, Nsukka, Hills, Lejja, Egyptian, Dunu Oka, Orunmila

The Geographical Environment of the Duat
A vital pointer to the geography of the Duat is the statement in The Book of the Dead that the Heart of the Duat, called Restau “is the underworld … on the south of Naarutf and it is the northern door…”. “Naarutf/An-rutf mean in Coptic - the language of native Egyptians - ‘It never Sprouteth” or “Place where there is neither Sprouting of Seeds nor of growth’.

Egyptian depiction of the Duat

An-rutf and Naarutf are cognates of Igbo words Ani Erutefu and Naerutefu which mean “Land that Supports no Growth’ and ‘That Cannot Sprout’, respectively. This is an obvious reference to the Sahara desert. A place located south of the Sahara is a West African location! The northern door of such a place implies, in this case, the northern area of Igbo land. Nsukka is located in Northern Igbo land!

COMPARATIVE ANALYSES WITH EVIDENCE FOUND IN LEJJA
The Eastern Side of Heaven: The Egyptian reference to the Duat (the Egyptian name for the underground Dwelling of the God Amun) as being located in the “East” or “Eastern side of Heaven” is, we believe, a reference to Igbo land traditionally known as “the East” or “the Land of the Rising Sun”. The Duat is called ‘Heaven’ by the ancient Egyptians, for that is where the good Pharaohs go when they die, to spend their Afterlife in the company of the Father of the gods, Amun.

River niger at Sunset

The Duat is traditionally located in the place where the ancient Egyptians believed the Sun rises and sets, and both locations are in the Eastern region of Nigeria – Igbo land. Traditionally, Igbo people also believed like the ancient Egyptians that their heaven is under the earth, which suggests that these ancient Egyptians were Igbos.

The Chains of Hills: Our first in the list of the geographical landmarks of the Duat found in Nsukka area is the chains of hills, which according to Zacharia Sitchen, marks the fourth region of the Duat. Nsukka is interspaced by chains of hills. Not only is Nsukka full of hills, Lejja is also surrounded by chains of hills, with some still showing evidence of ancient terrace farming, which the natives are proud to showcase.

Sahara Desert near Northern Nigeria

Enugwu State where Nsukka is located is a state marked by chains of hills, so too, is Nsukka town and the roads leading to it. C.C. Opata states that “hills are included in the deities of Lejja”, and that within Lejja itself are located the following hills: Ugwu Amushi, Ugwu Nkwo, Ugwu Nwadike, Ugwu Amagu, and Ugwu Amaovuku.

The Famous Three Hills and Two Hills of Egyptian hieroglyphics: In all ancient Egyptian texts, two major hieroglyph letters that mark the location of the Duat are Three Hills and Two Hills. Most Egyptologists translate the three hills and two hills hieroglyphs (plate 1)  as ‘foreign land’ and or ‘desert’.

Enugu's step pyramids, Enugu State, Nigeria

But L.A. Waddell in his comparative study of Sumerian symbol-writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics made a very important discovery.

He found that the Egyptian word for ‘desert’ occurs in Sumerian inscriptions under the name Du or Dun, which is written in Egyptian with the three hills and two hills hieroglyphic letters, and that over the years, the Three Hills and Two Hills have been read by Egyptians as ‘Desert’.

He noted that the actual Sumerian meaning for ‘desert’ is “mound, earthworks or sand hills (– in other words that these hills were piled up sand)” Waddell reveals that the Sumerian word DN –the name for these sand mounds  - is a sun title and that the fifth pharaoh after Menes (in Egypt’s first dynastic king) bore the title Dun Du.

All these revelations go to show that the Egyptian Three Hills and Two Hills symbols are referential landmarks for actual Three Hills and Two Hills located in the place called Dunu Oka in Enugu State; that the gods of Egypt created these hills by piling up sand, as a way-shower and landmark pointing to the Duat!

Also, one is led to the conclusion that the fifth Pharaoh after Menes in Egypt’s first dynasty, who was said to have borne the name Dun Du/Dan would have been a native of Dunu Oka, Nsukka, Enugu or Heliopolis in Igbo land! Perhaps the word Du-At is derived from Dunu Atum! Dunu means ‘Lord’ in Igbo. It also means ‘to settle/to sit’- ‘The Place Where Atum Sits’! The Enugu's step pyramids, in Enugu State, Eastern-Nigeria has been speculated by Professor Achonolu to be the Sumerian lost City of Akkad.

On the road to Nsukka University town, one is shocked to actually see on both sides of the road, one after the other, the actual Two Hills and Three Hills (plate 2) looking every inch as if they are tailored and barbed daily with no trees and high foliage on any of them.

Plate   1.

This confirms the Sumerian explanation for the Three Hills and Two Hills as “sand mounds”, piled up by ancient Igbo god-men rulers of Egypt. This revelation also confirms a Nigeria-based ancient Sumer – the origin of civilization.

Plate 1: The Egyptian Three Hills and Two Hills hieroglyphic letters. Plate 2: Three Hills near Ozalla (by C. Acholonu), and  Plate 3: Two Hills (by A. Animalu) near Umuoka on the road to Lejja, Nsukka, Enugu State. The Hole in the Earth: The Egyptian City of the Sun was known by the ancient name An, Biblical On, meaning ‘Hole’. Egyptian texts refer to this place as “the mouth of the earth… the eastern door of heaven” – “the Gateway to Heaven”. The Igbo word for ‘Hole’ is Onu.

There is a hole in the ground in the Lejja shrine at Dunu Oka (see plate 12, the hole is under the mound/celestial disc). The hole is covered with a mound of black iron slag. The villagers claim that the hole is bottomless and those ritual offerings are made to it at annual festivals to the Dead ancestors. This, of course, is “the mouth of the earth” that leads into the Duat.

Plate    2.

By Egyptian tradition the sun to ends its daily course at a place called Abydos in Heliopolis, and to enter into the Tuat (Duat) at this place through a gap (hole) in the mountains called in Egyptian peq.”

The Egyptian hieroglyphic letters for peq - consist of a cross within a circle (which is the symbol of Khemmenu and/or Heliopolis), a bush foul, a staircase representing the Stairway to Heaven, and a symbol meaning Theth – ‘Sunrise’ – (Igbo Teta means ‘Wake up’). Peq (hole) is derived from the Igbo word mpio okwa, which means ‘Bush fowl’s escape hole’. All these words and their corresponding metaphors for the movement of the sun belong to the Igbo linguistic and cultural environment.

 Plate   3.

Africa’s most celebrated poet, the late Christopher Okigbo, a former librarian at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, gave the title Heaven’s Gate to his only collection of poems. In the collection, he wrote about a visit into the bowels of the earth to draw inspiration from the gods of ‘Heaven’ who dwell inside the earth.

The poems treat themes such as the ‘Last Judgment’; an adventure-like journey through several stations inside a Duat-like environment; the encounter with gods of various appearances and roles in the bowels of the earth, ritual prayers at every station,; Death, Burial in an Egyptian stone sarcophagus, and resurrection…

Knowing what we now know about the Egyptian Duat, it is obvious to us that Christopher Okigbo knew about the Duat located in the bowels of the earth in Igbo land and of its “mouth” located in Nsukka University’s neighboring town of Lejja. Perhaps he was an initiate of the Dunu Oka shrine of Horus and Osiris.

Oshuru's Shrine at the top of this image

The Conical Benben Mound: A Conical object called the Benben is the major landmark of the Duat in Heliopolis. Egyptian texts say that it was a conical or tower-like structure with a strange stone on its tip.

The Benben was, in fact, the original model of the Egyptian pyramid, thus the hieroglyph for the pyramid (a conical form with a rectangular base) was actually an image of the Benben.

Ralph Ellis in Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs notes that “the Benben is one of the most ancient traditions in Egypt. It was centered on the (legend of the prehistoric) city of Heliopolis and the temple of the Phoenix… Legend presumes that the original Benben stone at Heliopolis went missing around 2,000 B.C.” And Ellis posits that the Benben is a phallic symbol projecting Amun’s sexuality in siring divine children/gods.

There is an ancient dilapidated model of the Benben in Lejja. It is a conical structure made of mud, with huge round blocks of slag piled around its base in a graded step-pyramid style (plate 4).

Plate       4. A

The Lejja example of the Egyptian Benben is called Odegwoo. Dr. Chukwuma Opata, in his study of the Lejja sacred monuments, noted that Odegwoo is a “conical” shrine object “associated with fertility and procreation,” and that all children born in the town are ritually registered and dedicated to it by the shrine priests.

This, in fact, links the Lejja conical structure with the phallic sexual and procreative Benben of Egypt’s Heliopolis, for both are procreative and are associated with the process of sexual siring of children in both cultures! In both cases, the Benben is understood to be a representative of the phallus of the god of the conical structure/Benben. Accordingly, this god is the father of all children born in Lejja and of all the gods of Egypt.

Plate      4. B

The 2,000 B.C. date of the disappearance of the Egyptian Benben stone might have been connected with the 2,000 B.C. archaeological date for Lejja iron smelting furnaces. 2023 B.C, was also the date of the destruction of Sumer and the rise of new Sumerian cities in the Middle East – Babylon, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Akkad. Perhaps what happened was that by 2,000 B.C. Heliopolis of Igbo land was abandoned when Sumer fell.

The priests migrated finally to Egypt or crossed over to start new civilizations in Bantu Africa and the Middle East under the old names of Sumerian cities, Assyria (Oshuru), Babylon, Akkad, Mesopotamia, Uruk.

Note: By looking at the map of Africa as a whole, including many ancient tribes and myths, it is absolutely impossible for the Igbo tribe to evolve to modern man, and also be the sole ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, independent of the many other African tribes before and all around them, at the time. Especially the Yoruba tribes who are the next door neighbour to the Igbo tribes. They have their own Flood and Creation Myth parallel to the Igbo Creation Myth.

ARGUMENT AGAINST
For example; the Igbo God Nri and also called Orunmila in Yorubaland, Thoth or Tehuti, in Egypt, Hermes Trismegistus in Greece and different names in China, Japan, Australia (Aboriginal Myth), and in both South and North Americas, cannot be unique to the Igbo tribes alone.

True Egyptian Benben Stone

Orunmila! The witness of fate Second to Oludumare (GOD or The Supreme Architect)) Thou are far more efficacious than medicine, Thou are the Immense Orbit that averts the day of Death. My Lord, Almighty that saved mysterious Spirit that fought death. To Thee, a salutation is first due in the morning.

Thou are the Equilibrium that adjusts World Forces. Thou art the One whose exertion it is to reconstruct the creature of the bad lot. Repairer of bad-luck, He who knows thee becomes immortal Lord, the indisputable king, Perfect in the House of Wisdom! My Lord! Infinite in knowledge! For not knowing thee in full, we are futile, Oh, if we could but know thee in full, all would be well with us. Ase o, Amen, Amun or Amen-Re.

Furthermore, Orunmila, in order to make access to the retrieval of the Divine Message (Ifa) easy, devised the computer compatible binary coding system, thousands of years before the emergence of computer consciousness in so-called modern man! So, Ifa is preserved in binary coded format and is output Parable - Format. According to many indigenous African legends, "their gods once existed as humans and had their way of communicating. Prior to their disappearance, they left with the people a means to communicate with them in the outer realm (Oracle Divination Systems)."

Omphalos Greek Version of the Benben Stone

"Ifa Oracle divination is based on the square of 16=16x16=256, 2^8 corresponding to the vertices of an 8-dimensional hypercube and to the binary 2-choice Clifford algebra C1(8) and so to related ones such as C1(8)xC1(8) = C1(16).

Since the number of sub-hypercubes in an 8-dimensional hypercube is 6,561 =81x81= 3^8. The Ifa Oracle has N=8 ternary 3-structure as well as binary 2-structure."

In addition; the Igbo God Eshi and also called Obatala in Yorubaland told us a similar story about flood and creation myth, apart from the fact that the tools employed to dry the land are slightly different.

Instead of Oka Smiths, Hills, and Bellows, in Igbo Flood and Creation Mythology, the Yoruba Flood and Creation Mythology, stated a snail's shell filled with sand, a white hen, a black cat, palm nut and a Chain (Signifying DNA).

Homer in an often-quoted passage tells how the Greek gods used to go on their feast-days to Ethiopia to commune with their ancestors. Dionysius wrote, “Upon the great Atlantic (formally known as Sea of Ethiopia), near the isle of Eritrea, for his pastures famed, the sacred race of Ethiopians dwell.” The original Niger-Congo 11,000 BCE, the 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-figure (Burkino-Fasso).

Illustration of 8 Dimensional Divination Plates

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.

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 a 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.

Iwo-Eleru Cave, where the Skulls were found, also called Iho-Eleru, 'Iho' meaning Hole in the Yoruba Language

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.

Iwo-Eleru Skulls: Iwo-Eleru, Ondo State, Western-Nigeria, Yorubaland. The cast of the Iwo Eleru skull shows marks of a more ancient ancestor "[The skull] has got a much more primitive appearance, even though it is only 13,000 years old," said Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, who was part of the team of researchers.

Igbo God Eshin also called Obatala in Yorubaland

Similar Skulls was discovered in Tanzania dating back a whopping 140,000 BC. These ancient humans skulls were discovered alongside modern-human at the time, suggesting at that point in history, ancient men were living side-by-side with modern humans and teaching them their ancient ways.

"This suggests that human evolution in Africa was more complex... the transition to modern humans was not a straight transition and then a cut-off." Prof Stringer thinks that ancient humans did not die away once they had given rise to modern humans.

They may have continued to live alongside their descendants in Africa, perhaps exchanging genes with them, until more recently than had been thought. The researchers say their findings also underscore a real lack of knowledge of human evolution in the region.

Ancient Zambia: Zambia is famous for its ancient schematic rock art. Northern Province has the highest concentration of rock art in Zambia and paintings are mainly found in and around rocky overhangs and caves. The most famous site is Mwela, about 7 miles east of the town of  Kasama which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The oldest in Zambia have been dated to between 350,000 and 400,000 years old! Many more are yet to be discovered.

Map of West and Central Africa

Ancient Gabon: The forest-savanna interface typical of central Gabon is well preserved in the park, and ecological and archaeological evidence shows that the area was inhabited almost continuously from late Palaeolithic times 350-400,000 years ago to the present. Scattered across the landscape is an exceptional archaeological record of successive cultures including the remains of Palaeolithic tools, Neolithic villages around 4,000 years old and Iron Age metal-working sites from 2,500 years ago. The Lope area has been inhabited for nearly 400,000 years and there are numerous artifacts telling the tales of the ancient hunter-gatherer settlements.

The Ogooué River has been a major trading route through these times and a road was built through the north of the park in the 1960s. The area was opened to forestry by the building of the railway in the 1980s this connects the national park to both Ivindo and Libreville. One can conclude that there was a lateral transmission from the East to the West, not only across the southern Sahara but also across all of Sudan to the Nile and Niger, the location of origin being in both cases Nubia.

The assertion by Professor Achonolu, that all Egyptian Pharaoh are direct descendants of Igbo people without considering the fact that other African tribes may well have contributed to the Pharaoh gene-pool as well. This claim by Professor Achonolu of Igbo exclusivity is sounding more and more improbable. We agreed with the research that the ancestors of the ancient Egyptian are from the Niger-Congo Civilisation made up from a family of nations tribes, of which the Igbo tribes are part of. End of part 3 of 10. Next Blog 13/02/19.