Page 35 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 26
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Community
The four branches of the “sene to mind the surface storyline of Releasing Gene-ius
na” in which the spider was the Dogon :
working will bear fruit .. The first For English Egyptologist
seed caught by the sense was that The main system of cosmology Wallis Budge moreover, in his
of the “mono”, a word meaning was developed at Heliopolis, Legends of the Egyptian Gods,
“to bring together” .. the second once the ancient holy city we find the ancient Egyptian
sene “gommuzo” or “bumpy”; where the pharaohs came to equivalent of creation of
the third sene “benu” or “stocky”; have their power consecrated. matter, known as “laying the
and sene “urio” – its “head”. The Not only was the Heliopolitan foundations”. As such,
four “sene” contained the four cosmology the earliest, but it
elements – sene na (water); sene also provided inspiration for • Firstly the hieroglyphic
gommuzo (air); senne benu (fire) Egyptian theologians throughout counterpart of the Dogon word
and sene urio (earth). later periods of history. In bummo, the act of conception,
the beginning was Nun, often is bu maa, a synonym for maat,
Dogon Parallels to Egyptian translated as “chaos”, containing based on the roots word maa,
Mythology the potential for the sees of life. which means to “perceive – our
It was from this chaos that the grounding
The Heliopolitan Cosmology sun emerged. It appeared on a • Secondly, the Egyptian
The many persistent similarities mound of earth covered in pure counterpart of the Dogon
between Dogon and Egyptian sand emerging from water, taking yala is ahau, which means
religious symbols and lifestyles the form of a standing stone, the “delineation of posts or
lead to a natural suggestion that “benben”, the focus of a cult at boundaries” – our emergence
modern Dogon society could Heliopolis, considered to be the • Thirdly, the Dogon
actually represent a modern original site of creation. tonu, an “approximation of
remnant of ancient Egyptian what is to be created” is the
culture. For Serge Sauneron in We know, moreover, that the first Egyptian teni, which means “to
his book The Priests of Ancient emergent gods of the Heliopolitan estimate” – our navigation
Egypt : tradition were Geb, Nut, Shu and • Finally, the Dogon
Tefnut – respectively associated creational stage, toy, is tematu,
The Egyptians never with earth (Geb), water (Nut), which means in ancient
considered their language – that wind (Shu) and fire (Tefnut), Egyptian “complete”, the same
corresponding to the hieroglyphs followed by Isis and Osiris, notion as the God Atum (to
– as a social tool; for them, it Seth and Nephythis, altogether be complete), which for us is
always remained a resonant constituting the eightfold Ogdoad. transformative effect.
echo of the vital energy that With Neith as the mother goddess,
had brought the universe to life, moreover, we therefore have at These four phases, in turn, can
a cosmic force. Thus study of the very foundation of Egyptian be related the four quantum
this language enabled them to religion the unmistakable symbol, forces : the gravitational
“explain” the cosmos. according to Scranton, for a force (grounding), the
primordial thread symbolizing electromagnetic force
Moreover, in A History of Ancient the four categories of quantum (emergence), the weak nuclear
Egypt, the French Egyptologist particles, expressed in virtually force (navigation), and the
Nicholas Grimal the same terms as that of the strong nuclear force (effect).
provided a description that calls Dogon.
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