Quoting the Book of the Dead, Sitchen writes that when the stairway is reached, “the king is nearing the heart of the Duat; he is near the Amenta, the Hidden Place. It was there that Osiris himself had risen to the Eternal Afterlife.
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| Plate 5A |
All the features mentioned here (highlighted) are located in the Eastern Duat at the place where the mouth of the Duat is supposedly located. An all of them have parallels with the Dunu Oka shrine in Lejja. There is indeed a stairway, a sloping pathway constructed in a graded fashion with piles of iron slag that leads from a section of the forest into the Dunu Oka village square (plate 5). The stairway is almost dilapidated, but we were able to clearly make out that this was a stairway and we said so to the villagers and fellow researchers on the mission, and everyone concurred.
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| Plate 5B |
The stairway is composed of four steps leading up to the central square, which is the heart and head of the entire structure. All the samples of the stairway we have so far seen in Egyptian texts are composed of four steps!
The Egyptian Book of the Dead actually says that a stairway leading up to the ‘sky’ is located in Khemennu (Khe’nnu). Even the ‘sky’ is represented in Lejja in the form of a huge crescent-shaped pile of slag with the sun disk resting in front of it (plate 6).
Plate 5a,b: (Right and Above) The Stairway leading to the Mouth of the Benben (close-up on step one down, left). Pictures by Catherine Acholonu.
Plate 6a,b: Oshuru - the ‘Sacred Groove’ where the Mouth of the Earth is hidden. Celestial Disc and the Roof of Heaven; Sun and Crescent Moon; The Sun coursing through the underside of the Sky/Neith and riding on the Celestial bark/boat – the River Niger; the Son (Sun-god) in the Mother’s womb (Nun). Plate 6a (below by Pamela Eze-Uzoamaka. Plate 6b (beneath) by Catherine Acholonu.
Two Magical Trees One of Which is Called by the Name of the Sumerian Sky God, Utu: Two magical Trees are also found at the Dunu Oka shrine. They are two ancient Trees, each with tangled roots screened off with piles of iron slag. The two sacred trees are actually shrines. They are called Utu Udeleigwe and Oya Ogwuu (plate 7a,7b)
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| Plate 6A |
The former is called the Tree of Justice where villagers swear their innocence and culprits are punished or miraculously executed; the latter is a Tree of Life and Healing, which neutralizes every charm and poison that is brought near it.
Oya Ogwuu is a tree associated with the sun and moon cycles. The village priests use it for counting the moon cycles using pebbles, thus computing the months and the years with it.
Again this coincides with the Egyptian “night of computing years, and of telling the months”! Zechariah Sitchin posits that the Egyptian Heliopolis of modern times is an imitation of the ancient Heliopolis of antiquity called “the House of Shamash” located in a “Place of Palms” (palm trees), which the Prophet Jeremiah referred to as the “Houses of the Gods of Egypt”, while the prophet Amos called it “the location of the palaces of Adad”. Shamash was the Akkadian name of the sky god whom the Sumerians called Utu. His symbol was the Eagle for he was the god of the skies and of the Sun.
The name of the Sumerian sky god Utu occurs severally in Lejja. The name of the first of the two magical Trees - Utu Udeleigwe means ‘Utu – the Vulture of the Sky’. This cannot be a coincidence, rather it implies that the sacred tree with that name is actually a totem representative of the god Utu himself.
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| Plate 6B |
Also, the name of the god Adad occurs in Lejja in the female form of Adada, who is the main deity female of Lejja. Her shrine is not far removed from the Dunu Oka Shrine.
Therefore the “House of Shamash” located in the “Place of Palms” referred to by Biblical prophet Amos, is Lejja in Nsukka, Enugu state.
The reference to this place as a place of palms is self-explanatory. Igbo land, nay Nigeria is the traditional home of the palm tree. It is an interesting revelation that this place is referred to in Jeremiah as the “Houses of the Gods of Egypt”. Might this be a reference to the countless shrines of gods in Nsukka, Enugu and in Igbo land?
The god Utu/Shamash is the most famous god of Sumer. He was the Sun. As Sun-god, he was perhaps the Sumerian equivalent of Egypt’s Horus. Sumerian texts reveal that Utu and his uncle Adad were always together. The same is true in Lejja with the names Utu and Adada appearing side by side. Even though the natives call her a female deity, their mythology says that she is a form of the putative male ancestor of Lejja, Ugwu Oke, whose name means ‘Male Hill’. Plate 7a,b: The Two Magical Trees: Utu Udeleigwe (below) and Oya Ogwuu (beneath). Pictures by C. C. Opata.
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| Plate 7A Utu Udeleigwe Tree Shrine |
Osiris -The Tree God of Egypt: Besides the two sacred Trees, we noticed that there was a mighty tree in the bush near the shrine that looked like no tree we had seen before. It was very huge and very high, yet was completely hollow inside.
It looked like it was cut along its length into three parts, with the third part looking like a leg thrust out from the knee. Later on, poring through Egyptian images of the Duat, we were attracted by an image (plate 7c) that reminded us of the one in Lejja, and of the story of Osiris’ body trapped in a wooden coffin inside the trunk of a mighty tree!
Like the tree in the image, this tree looked as if someone had hollowed it out, leaving only the bark, yet it had remained strong through hundreds of years. We noticed that there are actually three trees in the image: two facing each other just like in Lejja, and a third huge hollowed tree at the side (just like in Lejja! We also noticed that all three trees are marked by the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘god’ - a flag pole. This is a confirmation from Egyptian records that the three trees in Lejja are gods of Egypt! Egyptians believe that Osiris is buried in the Duat in the district of Abydos.
What could these strange symbols be, if the completion of the circle of symbols indicating that THIS was the “district of Abydos, the burial place of the East” where the “funeral chest” of Osiris “the Lord of the Mouth of the Duat” lies. A Text from The Book of the Dead, attributed to a god-man called Unas, refers to Osiris as the “Great Quaker (Kwa-Aka) who comes forth from the Asert Tree.”
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| Plate 7B Oya Ogwuu Tree Shrine |
Ralph Ellis says that Osiris is a god who is associated with a Tree and who is believed to dwell inside a tree. Thus the Duat image under reference (plate 7b) could easily be seen as portraying two small sacred trees and a third large tree with a hollow space where Osiris dwells.
The villagers claim that the ancestors (in the form of the ancestral masquerades) issue out of that Tree to enter the House of Fire for the annual Festival of the Dead (Olili Ndi Ushi).
This explains why Egyptian gods wear animal heads (see plates 11b, 9b, 13a, b). They are wearing their traditional Igbo masquerade images. Plate 7c below:
An Egyptian image of the Duat showing a rough representation of the pile of slag rocks looking like blocks; the X, a known symbol of Osiris represents the Oshuru Mound where the hole is; the Two Magical Trees are facing each other as in Lejja, the Stairway, sometimes called a “ladder” is located left. The mighty hollow Tree of Osiris can be seen on the extreme left. All three trees look like flagpoles, the Egyptian hieroglyphic letter for ‘god’. (from Andrew Collins, Beneath the Pyramids, 2010, p. 72.
Plate 9b: Another image associated with the Duat in Egypt clearly showing pillars surrounding a mound like the Oshuru shrine of Lejja. The stairway can be seen on the chest of the crescent with an antelope head.
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| Plate 7C |
The crescent is the matches the one in Lejja and the antelope head implies a forest environment.
This image also seems to represent the lead masquerade of the Lejja Festival of the Dead (Omoba masquerades) who wears an antelope head.and carries bells on the head area as well as sticks for caning offenders. It is called Icharicha. (Opata. C., “The Ethnography of Otobo Ugwu Dunoka”, unpublished paper, p. 14, 23). Great House of Two Truths: Osiris proudly referred to himself as “the victorious scribe of Ani”, “the favoured one of his divine city”, “Lord of the Mouth of the tomb” the one whose “throne is placed within the darkness’, while his princes in Lejja/Igboland/Nigeria “make festivals for him in Annu” – “he shall do whatsoever pleaseth him even as the gods who are in the underworld, for everlasting millions of ages, world without end”.
Osiris refers to the Duat as the Hall of Double Truth, and frequent references to it in various Egyptian texts maintain that it is a Great House of Two Truths, represented by two lions sitting back to back as if in opposition to each other.
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| Plate 8 Place of Iron-Slags Pillars |
This too is the tradition at the Odegwoo (Benben) shrine in Lejja. We are told that this is the only shrine in Igbo land, where one shrine has two priests who make offerings at the same time but with separate incantations and prayers.
The two priests are said to be forever in competition while praying, for which reason they each pray silently so as not to be overheard or copied by each other. The Two Truths may be a reference to the duality of life such as the unity of male and female, sun and moon, night and day – the yin and the yang.
The House of Fire: The third sacred monument in this section after the stairway and the two magical trees, is a House that the villagers call the ‘Furnace House’ (Plate 10). It is named Okiti Akpuriagedege in local parlance and is built exactly like a furnace - a tubular mud house with a small door and no windows. The natives say it is the meeting and resting house for the Dead. As in the Egyptian tradition everything associated with the Duat has to do with the Living Dead.
The Duat is called “the Land of the Dead”, and also “Black Land” - a reference to its black population. The Lejja furnace house is where the Dead Ancestors who were smiths in past ages congregate during the annual Covenant Renewal Festival between the Dead and the Living (Olili Ndi Ushi). Like any furnace, the Lejja furnace house is a house of fire. It is, doubtless, to say, the original model of the Egyptian “House of Fire” (plate 10) whose images as represented in The Book of the Dead, is very akin to the Lejja Furnace House.
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| Plate 9A |
Ashura – The Sacred Groove of Osiris; The Celestial Disc Symbol of Ra and the Table of the Sun: The symbol of the Celestial Disc in Lejja is called Oshuru. It is the rounded pile of slag surrounded by the huge crescent-shaped pile (plate 11).
The Book of the Dead says that the Duat city of Abydos in Heliopolis was called Busiris – ‘House of Osiris’. The word Busiris – ‘House of Osiris’ is an Igbo expression, meaning Obu Oshuru – ‘House of Oshuru’ or ‘House of Osiris’! From this perspective, it can be further confirmed that Osiris, the Lord of the Egyptian Duat, was the Lord of the Lejja smelters. The Oshuru object in Lejja is in the shape of the celestial disc/mound.
It is flanked by a crescent-shaped pile of slag rounded into a circle around the disc (plate 6, 11). Egyptian images and symbols created by the combination of disc, crescent and surrounding circle are: a winged disc; a circle with a dot in the center (symbol of Ra); the sun coursing along the roof of heaven or gliding under the bosom of the mother goddess Nut; the sun traveling inside the boat of millions of years (plate 6).
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| Plate 9B |
Plate 11a, b: The Celestial Disc where the bottomless pit is located. 11 b: The god Thoth bearing the Celestial Disc inside a crescent moon, as in plate 6, far above.
The Boat of Millions of Years is a metaphor for the River Niger – the Traverser of Millions of Years. Egyptians believed that it was on the BACK (metaphorical ‘BARK/BOAT’) of the River Niger that civilization, like the sun, rode to get to Egypt in North Africa, borne by the gods Thoth, Maat and Osiris (plate 12).
From all indications, the Eastern side of Heaven, from where the sun rises out of the underground Duat is Enugu State, marked by the mouth of the Duat in Lejja, while the Western side of Heaven is Anambra State, marked by the Niger/Omambala/Ezu double confluence (Egypt’s ‘Double Nest’) in Aguleri, where the Sun takes a dip and goes to sleep in the night. A Double Confluence is a rare phenomenon. The Egyptians could not have missed it.
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| Plate 10A The House of Fire at Lejja |
Accordingly, Prof. John Umeh reveals that the dot in the center of the circle is “Mgba Aka, which in its original purity is the alternative terminology (for) Mgba Nne Chukwu – ‘Circle of the Mother of God’, and is enshrined in the ancient Igbo Astronomical symbol of a circle with a dot in its center.
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| Plate 10B |
This mystical symbol, according to him, is the Sun’s Astrological symbol of ancient Egypt and Igbos as is used today in Igbo astral divination.”
Here is more than enough evidence of a tie between Egyptian and Igbo metaphysics, for the dot in the circle, famously known as the symbol of Ra, is in actuality a Mother Symbol alluding to the womb of Nun where the Sun god dwells and from which he rose at the First Time of Creation.
The circle with a dot in the center is the central monument in Lejja! Nun is the Egyptian name for the Waters of the Beginning, from which the Sun-god rose, but it is also the name of one of the Delta tributaries of the River Niger.
The entire complex of the Lejja shrine is laid out on the ground surface like a table. Citing Herodotus The Histories III, in his own book, The Stairway to Heaven, Zecharia Sitchen revealed that king Cambyses of Persia sent soldiers on a hazardous journey across the Sahara into Sub-Saharan Africa in search of a mythical Table of the Sun. He lost his entire army in the process.
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| Plate 11A |
Yet he did not find what we have found.
The Lejja Table of the Sun has the overall appearance of a huge Eye looking up to heaven – the so-called Eye of Ra.
In the year 500 B.C., Alexander the Great made the same journey in search of the abode of the gods of Egypt. Biblical Moses made the same journey to the land of Ham and Canaan’s God when he was looking for divine help against the Pharaoh of Egypt. This God is known in the Hebrew Old Testament as El – ‘the Hidden One’. In Igbo tradition, he is known as Ele. The name Ele is enshrined in the words Lejja, which means Ele Jaa (“Ele is Hidden”).
We also gathered in an interview with the natives that the hill where the ancestor of the Lejja people is worshipped is called Ugwele/Ugwu Ele. Ugwu Ele is the name of the hill in Abia State where the Early Stone Age ape-men lived before moving to Lejja.
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| Plate 11B |
As weird as this may sound (and as stated in the preface to the first edition of They Lived Before Adam) Okwara Ugwele was the title of the putative ancestor of the natives of Orlu town in Imo state, the native home of this writer! Plate 12 below:
The River Niger (representing the Goddesses Nut/Nun) on which the Igbo gods Atum-Ra, Maat and Thoth sail like the sun by boat to Egypt (extreme left). The trio arriving in Egypt (extreme right). Atum – The Igbo Opara Adama:
The presence of the names of two famous gods of Sumer Utu and Adad in the Lejja pantheon of local gods tells us that the Lejja iron technology was part of the Mother pot of Sumerian civilization, a civilization originally located in ancient Nigeria before migrations to the Middle East took place. The issue of a West African location of early Sumer, is no more a matter of surmise, but a reality. As pre-empting our forth-coming book Eden and Sumer on the Niger, a new book by Hermel Hermstein titled Black Sumer - An African Origin of Civilization, has broken the deadlock surrounding Africa’s contribution to Sumerian civilization by advancing a West Africa mother tongue for Sumerians.
Anchored on the linguistic argument that the ancient Sumerians who midwife the Babylonian, Assyrian and Mesopotamian civilizations that later sprung up in the Middle East, spoke the Niger-Congo language of ancient Nigeria and Cameroon. Hermstein posits that “Proto Niger-Congo has been estimated to date back to between 8,500 B.C. and 11,000 B.C.!” The story of Creation in Eden was passed down from Sumer and became part of the mythologies of the whole world.
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| Plate 13A |
In Lejja and in Igbo mythology these powerful ancients who never died were and are still being referred to as Ndi Ushi.
Their descendants were called and are still Adama in Igbo and Idoma languages, and Atama by the Edo and Igala people. They function as priests if the earth goddess Eze ana, and as First sons God among humanity. Adama/Atama means “Founding Father of the race” in Igbo, Idoma, and Igala. For this reason, they are called Opara Adama in Igbo language.
Opara Adama is the traditional Igbo truest form of kingship resting upon the Adamas by divine primogeniture direct from the god of the immortal Ape-men, who is the invisible God of this Earth Ele/El/Adum/Amun.
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| Modern Igbo Masquerade |
That this concept was carried from Igbo land into Egypt and was the origin of the Pharaohnic dynasties of Egypt, is evident from the fact that, according to the Wikipedia definition of Atum, the word Pharaoh is derived from Par-Atama, which is derived from Par-Atum/Par-Aat –
‘Son of the Great Royal House of Atum’, derived from Igbo Opara Atum in Igbo.
It is in reference to those First Ancestors who never died and the later ancestors who died and found eternal life in the Duat, that Egyptians refer to their ‘Heaven’ or its Igbo land location as the Land of the Living and Land of the Dead. The Igbo, Igala, Benin/Edo and Idoma belong to the Kwa linguistic family of the Niger-Congo, which as we have seen in this piece, is genetically linked with the Canaanites.
Waddell insists that Par-aat is the origin of words like Bharat (the Bharat clan of Mahabharata epic of India) and Brit from which is derived from Britannia and Britain. Indeed all nations in existence came from the one Post Deluge putative ancestor of the Kwa tribes, whom the Nigerian (Edo, Idoma, Igbo, Benin, Yoruba) mythologies call Eri/Iduu Eri or Obatala/Oduduwa). End of part 4 0f 10. The next blog 19/02/19.
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