Egyptian origins of Qabalah?
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I thought this was interesting, though I am not entirely sure of it.
My acquaintance wrote:
I was struck dumb on reading the "Hymn of the Ten Emanations of Amen" and seeing how closely it resembles the Sephiroth ideas which date from about 1200 CE. Combined with my researches into Senet whilst studying at Leiden Univ Egyptology dept, there seems a very strong case to claim that Qabbalah derives from Egypt, and specific from the Cult of Amen. Here is the text (from walls of Hibis Temple) -The Ten Emanations of Amen
These Invocation hymns were sung at the opening of the naos in the morning as
the Sun's rays first illuminate the cult statue. The ten bau,souls' or manifestations of Amen run in descending order, from highest tolowest'. Prof
Assmann points out that although the secret names of Amen are "hidden before his
children" and imperceptible, nonetheless what follows is a list of what is
"perceptible" in the material world, yet is understood by the initiated as
manifestations of Amen.[ENTRANCE CAPTION]
The Good God
Lord of the Two Lands
Lord of Accomplishing Rites
Beloved-of-Amen-Rah-of-Hibis
The Son of Rah
Lord of Appearances
Darius is worshipping his father
Amen-Rah King of the Gods
Great God within Hibis[PRELIMINARY ADDRESS]
Leading the secret rites of Amen
which are upon the slates of Zizyphus.
Words spoken by One
Horus having purified him
And Thoth having censed him
In order to do everything good and pure
For Amen-Rah
Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands
For Amen-Rah
Lord of Hibis, Mighty of scimitar
According to all his mysterious titularies
Which are hidden from his children:
It is so that the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands might shine in his
manifestations
That the doors of heaven are opened upon earth[REFRAIN]
Awake being rested
May you awake in peace!
May Amen awake in life and peace
May (insert name) awake in peace![FIRST BA] "Ba in his ever-lasting flame"
Horus who is in the nomes {districts}
Who illumines the Two Lands
Bull who ejaculates Nun
Who lives eternally
In his name of Rah
Every day.[SECOND BA] "Ba in his Left Eye"
The one living of births in his left eye
Whom everybody loves
In his effective form of Moon
God of hearts and minds.[THIRD BA] "Ba of Shu"
It is in allowing throats to breathe
That he spits out wind
In his name of Amen-who-endures-in all-things
The Ba of Shu for every God.[FOURTH BA] "Ba of Osiris"
Body of life who creates the "wood-of-life"
Nepri who floods the Two Lands
Nobody in the circuit of the Two Lands lives without his knowledge
In his name of Nun the Elder.[FIFTH BA] "Ba of Tefnut"
The b3-ram who is in his Mehen-serpent
Who illumines by means of his brilliant eyes
Whose torch-flame encircles him in the earth
In his name of Res Wedja {Osiris}
God who creates the morning-light.[SIXTH BA] "Ba of the Living Royal Ka"
Horus of the Five Ba's
Living one who lives in Nun
In his name of Living Royal Ka
God of the Sunfolk.[SEVENTH BA] "Ba of rw-tsy {Sphinx}"
Lion,
Living of face before the Great Temple of Anu
Who spits out every lion
In his name of Ba of Ba's
God of animals.[EIGHTH BA] "Human figure, unlabelled"
Horus of the Horus Gods
Dappled of plummage
Who lives as falcon gods
In his name of Horakhty
God of the recumbent ones.[NINTH BA] "Living Ba, he shines when he comes forth from the nt-waters"
{crocodiles}
He who enters into the earth
The srq-lake in his innards
In his name of Ba of those-in-the-water
God of fish.[TENTH BA] "Living Ba […] the Gods"
{Ba of the chthonic creatures}
He who lives as a scarab-beetle
Who flies to that which the HeH-Gods support
Who lives in his name of Nehebkau
God of those in their tombs.
kemetic.org/basamen.htmlFurther information at kemetic.org/zenet.html "Kabalah Deconstructed" and
elsewhere at kemetic.org site. More to come including Zenet Two book. -
Gave it a cursory reading - interesting piece.
I just wanted to say that the Egyptians numerical system was separate from their alphabet - which is not to say there was no system taught in the mystery schools. -
@Uni_Verse said
"Gave it a cursory reading - interesting piece.
I just wanted to say that the Egyptians numerical system was separate from their alphabet - which is not to say there was no system taught in the mystery schools."The Egyptians did not use an alphabet, hieroglyphs are way more complicated than an alphabet.
I think that he was writing specifically about the origins of the 10 sephiroth. Which of course, is only one aspect of Qabalah.
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@AliceKnewI said
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@Uni_Verse said
"Gave it a cursory reading - interesting piece.
I just wanted to say that the Egyptians numerical system was separate from their alphabet - which is not to say there was no system taught in the mystery schools."The Egyptians did not use an alphabet, hieroglyphs are way more complicated than an alphabet.
I think that he was writing specifically about the origins of the 10 sephiroth. Which of course, is only one aspect of Qabalah."
Actually the Egyptians used a cuneiform alphabet for normal day to day record keeping, so yes, they had an alphabet.
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@Takamba said
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Actually the Egyptians used a cuneiform alphabet for normal day to day record keeping, so yes, they had an alphabet."No, the ancient Egyptians did not use an alphabet for their language. They used a cursive form of hieroglyphs called Hieratic, and in the late period used another cursive form of hieroglyphs called Demotic, for day to day business. Neither of these are alphabets.
The Egyptians used a limited form of hieroglyphs as a alphabet ONLY to write the names of foreigners. This is where you get the "Egyptian alphabet" that is marketed to tourists.
Cuneiform is the writing system of Mesopotamia. -
@AliceKnewI said
"
@Takamba said
"
Actually the Egyptians used a cuneiform alphabet for normal day to day record keeping, so yes, they had an alphabet."No, the ancient Egyptians did not use an alphabet for their language. They used a cursive form of hieroglyphs called Hieratic, and in the late period used another cursive form of hieroglyphs called Demotic, for day to day business. Neither of these are alphabets.
The Egyptians used a limited form of hieroglyphs as a alphabet ONLY to write the names of foreigners. This is where you get the "Egyptian alphabet" that is marketed to tourists.
Cuneiform is the writing system of Mesopotamia."Although Cuneiform originated in Mesopotomia, it was adopted by the ancient Egyptians. I am not a tourist. To say that this meant that the Egyptians didn't have an alphabet (because it was the Mesopotimian alphabet) is the same as saying this message is not written in an alphabet because (wait for it... 1,2,3...) it uses the Roman alphabet and the Arabic numerals.
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@Takamba said
"Although Cuneiform originated in Mesopotomia, it was adopted by the ancient Egyptians. I am not a tourist. To say that this meant that the Egyptians didn't have an alphabet (because it was the Mesopotimian alphabet) is the same as saying this message is not written in an alphabet because (wait for it... 1,2,3...) it uses the Roman alphabet and the Arabic numerals."
Can you provide documentation for this? I have never heard of this, and I doubt it.
Cuneiform is not an alphabet either. There was communication between ancient Egypt and Sumeria during the development of writing. So there was an exchange of ideas during the development of writing. Is that what you mean? They used to think that cuneiform was earlier, but a few years ago, an excavation in Abydos discovered older Egyptian hieroglyphs.
There was alphabetic component to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but it was used only to write the names of foreigners. This was not cuneiform, and it was not used for day to day business. The kingdom of Meroe in Sudan adopted this alphabetic component of hieroglyphs to write their own language, as they did not have their own writing system. It's probable that this alphabetic component of hieroglyphs was used to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt, who took it with them to the Near East, which probably led to the first widely used alphabet, Phoenician.
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I'm not going to do all the work for you when it was you who accused me of making up "knowledge."
Here's a link to a site designed for children (easy reading). It makes generalized statements of "facts" typically accepted by linguists.
Here's the relevant quote:
Cuneiform writing spread to a good part of the ancient Middle East and was used by many different peoples such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians. Most of these peoples spoke Semitic languages, yet the cuneiform system was used also by people who spoke Indo-European languages, such as the Hittites. It was used also by the Egyptians to communicate with the princes of the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean sea. Cuneiform writing lasted millennia until replaced by alphabetic writing, which was much easier to learn and to use. However, cuneiform writing did not disappear as soon as alphabetic writing became available. It survived for many centuries because the scribes considered it superior for expressing shades of thought and of language.
- Emphasis mine
And when I wrote "day to day" use previously, I assume you know as well as I do that the average citizen in ancient cultures didn't right, it was the governors and priests who's "day to day business" I was referring to. If I was mistaken in assuming you had that intelligence without my needing to point it out, forgive me.
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"It was used also by the Egyptians to communicate with the princes of the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean sea."
Yes, I agree with that. They wrote letters to foreigners in the foreigner's language.
For their own day to day, at home in Egypt, they used Hieratic. Common people did not read and write, but royalty and nobles hired scribes to record their business.
This is getting way off of my intention in my original post, which was about the "Hymn of the Ten Emanations of Amen" and whether or not there is any correlation to the ten sephiroth.
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It's quite interesting as an early expression of ten divine ideas.
There is certainly no certainty on when the s'fiyroth, as we know them, were doctrinalized. Just off the top of my head (having not lined up all the documents and sorted out this particular question, here are a few points on the history.
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The s'fiyroth were unambiguously established by mid-13th C., and discussed in excruciating detail in The Gates of Light by Gikatilla.
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The sequence of divine names, as attributed to the s'fiyroth, appears in Sefer Y'tziyrah in a passage that likely dates to first century BCE.
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A different 10-fold pattern, possibly proto-s'fiyroth or coexisting, is articulated in The Book of Contemplation, dating from early 13th C.
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A 10-fold pattern of divine emanation is buried in the beginning of Genesis, though it isn't transparently the sefiyroth as we know them. (Current scholarship dates this as about 6th C. BCE.)
There may be earlier landmarks I'm not remembering on the fly.
Since the document you cited is linked to Darius I, it also dates from 6th C. BCE, yes? (I didn't notice a dating anywhere.) I should mention that though the 10-fold ideas were being expressed in Genesis, there wouldn't have been any significant Hebrew-Egyptian during that time, because it's the period of the Babylonian captivity. However, Genesis (by current scholarship) dates either from the time of the captivity or from a bit sooner; and, if it's sooner (probably 7th C.), then it seems to predate the text you quoted.
Some opinions:
"The ten bau,
souls' or manifestations of Amen run in descending order, from highest tolowest'."This removes ambiguity on which direction they're intended. If parallel, it is in the sequence Kether-to-Malkuth.
"
[FIRST BA] "Ba in his ever-lasting flame"
Horus who is in the nomes {districts}
Who illumines the Two Lands
Bull who ejaculates Nun
Who lives eternally
In his name of Rah
Every day."This could be Kether, or easily Hakh'mah, or conceivably others. But, in any case, it is the Kether-like by place in the sequence, and by the characteristics that arise from that placement.
"[SECOND BA] "Ba in his Left Eye"
The one living of births in his left eye
Whom everybody loves
In his effective form of Moon
God of hearts and minds."I thought we were going for a neat left eye / right eye trade-off here, but it doesn't develop that way. While I could make a case that this "Moon God" ties to Hakh'mah, it's not obvious - I'd only credit it if everything else more or less lined up clearly.
"[THIRD BA] "Ba of Shu"
It is in allowing throats to breathe
That he spits out wind
In his name of Amen-who-endures-in all-things
The Ba of Shu for every God."Shu as Biynah is pretty strange. The throat attribution is interesting, but a minor (and probably late-developed) attribution, so I'm ignoring it. I'd call this a clean miss. (NB: All of these could be "made to fit" with appropriate chains of attributions, but that wouldn't be the way to assess whether these are possible source-ideas for the Hebrew Tree of Life. The fit needs to be pretty self-evident.)
"[FOURTH BA] "Ba of Osiris"
Body of life who creates the "wood-of-life"
Nepri who floods the Two Lands
Nobody in the circuit of the Two Lands lives without his knowledge
In his name of Nun the Elder."Osiris has a woody?
Seriously, this is a reasonable fit to Hesed. Maybe even a good fit."[FIFTH BA] "Ba of Tefnut"
The b3-ram who is in his Mehen-serpent
Who illumines by means of his brilliant eyes
Whose torch-flame encircles him in the earth
In his name of Res Wedja {Osiris}
God who creates the morning-light."This is interesting primarily because Tefnut is Shu's mate, and this creates a clear side-by-side polarity of the fourth and fifth entries. And I like the lion attributions, though her relationship to water seems a miss. The ram is puzzling - not an Aries idea, but surely the ram with which Amoun is identified, yes? That makes it the wrong archetype. However, some of the other ideas are OK if not stirling.
"[SIXTH BA] "Ba of the Living Royal Ka"
Horus of the Five Ba's
Living one who lives in Nun
In his name of Living Royal Ka
God of the Sunfolk."I love this one. It doesn't get much clearer than this! This sixth entry is the best of the ten.
"[SEVENTH BA] "Ba of rw-tsy {Sphinx}"
Lion,
Living of face before the Great Temple of Anu
Who spits out every lion
In his name of Ba of Ba's
God of animals."To the extent that this could be made to express Netzach, it could equally well fit half the sefiyroth. Obscure at best.
"[EIGHTH BA] "Human figure, unlabelled"
Horus of the Horus Gods
Dappled of plummage
Who lives as falcon gods
In his name of Horakhty
God of the recumbent ones."Horus has no distinctive association with Hod, and the "dappled of plumage" is appropriate only in the ways that Mercury and Sun overlap and reinforce each other. Overall, I think this is a totally wrong attribution (or, in the alternative, making it fit would require some development - the core idea expressed here is wrong as presented).
"[NINTH BA] "Living Ba, he shines when he comes forth from the nt-waters"
{crocodiles}
He who enters into the earth
The srq-lake in his innards
In his name of Ba of those-in-the-water
God of fish.""Living Ba" is a very good description of Y'sod! This is probably the second-best entry.
"[TENTH BA] "Living Ba […] the Gods"
{Ba of the chthonic creatures}
He who lives as a scarab-beetle
Who flies to that which the HeH-Gods support
Who lives in his name of Nehebkau
God of those in their tombs."Well, the reference is specifically to the chthonic, i.e., earthy. That's a square hit. This is the animating soul of those in the earth or (given the Khephra mention) those who dwell under the earth.
So, the Middle Pillar is pretty good (totally acceptable). Some of the others at least portray a polarity left-right as we might expect. Some miss the mark and are, at best, sufficiently vague that they could fit several s'fiyroth. The 10-fold pattern seems to have come into being about the time Genesis was written, but doesn't seem like it could have influenced Genesis; and, in any case, Genesis has, at best, a structural frame of a 10-fold system of divine emanation without actually having much content to the frame.
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Thank you so much for your thorough, thoughtful analysis, Jim.
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If you're looking for origins then you might also find this paper by Simo Parpola instructive. (It is a shame he didn't source the illustrations better though.)
The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy
93's.
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Wow! Powerful stuff.
My mind sought to arrange it so Entrance /Preliminary / Refrain was Kether
First Ba (2)- Ninth Ba (10)
The Tenth almost a level beneath Malkuth (Q'plipothic?)Though the strongest impression was of God "Bleeting out the Word" - each verse an emanation.