11-11-2015, 03:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-11-2015, 05:33 PM by Steppingfeet.)
During the course of the Ra Contact, the term Egypt appears in 38 different Q&As. Of those, Ra prefaces the use of the word "Egypt" or "Egyptian" with, "what you now call," or "which you call," or "in the area you know of as."
Seems those we now call Egyptians called themselves something entirely differently.
From Robert Bauval's new book The Soul of Ancient Egypt: Restoring the Spiritual Engine of the World
http://grahamhancock.com/bauvalosman1/
What’s in a Name?
When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, he pondered on the violent feud between the noble families of the Capulets and Montagues and their obsession with their name. This prompted the English bard to ask the rhetorical question: “what’s in a name?” He then gave his reply by saying “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”1 To an ancient Egyptian, however, such a concept would have been completely alien. Things had to be called by their correct allocated name and no other. For it was only the correct name and its proper utterance that made vocal the soul of the object or person so named. Names became talismans, magical devices imbued with an invisible, immaterial, and immeasurable energy that, when correctly dispatched, would force the mind to unleash the most potent of emotions and the deepest of thoughts. An Egyptian would not, therefore, hesitated to reply to Shakespeare question with those words: “to lose my name is to lose my soul.”
“Unlike modern society, the ancient Egyptians recognized the true importance of the name (Egyptian ren). Giving a name to a newborn was therefore a sacred act for any Egyptian parent. Speaking or writing his/her ren gave ‘existence’ to a person, both in life but also for eternity—so long as that name was perpetuated in eternal stone—to be read and uttered by devout descendants or a mere passersby. To chisel out or erase a name was to kill a person in the afterlife. To forget a name was to make it ‘non-existent’ . . . to the Egyptian mind, the ren was as important as the soul because, through the continuing memory of that name, the being—or on a grander scale the civilization bearing that name—continued to exist beyond time.”
Today the world refers to the long and narrow fertile strip running from the border of Sudan in the south to the shores of the Mediterranean in the north, as “Egypt.” This name is universally accepted as being true and correct for this country. As for the people who inhabit it today, they are called not only “Egyptians” but also “Arabs.” It thus often comes as a surprise when one is told that these names are not original or even native to this country. The name “Egypt” was coined by Greeks colons in the 4th century CE, and it is a corruption from the name Koptos, itself a corruption of Gebtu, the name of an ancient area in the south of the country, probably as ancient as 3000 BCE.” The name of the country that was most commonly used by the ancient Egyptians themselves was Kemet. According to Egyptologists, this name means “The Black Land”, and derives from the black alluvial soil which was deposited by the annual flooding of the river Nile.” But others contest this explanation, and propose that the name Kemet stems from the inhabitants themselves or, to be more precise, the color of their skin. It is highly likely that the original inhabitants of Egypt were dark or black-skinned Africans; a fact that can be ascertained even today by the dark-skinned Nubian people who live in the southern part of the country. That Kemet may indeed mean ‘The Land of the Blacks’ is also supported by discoveries made recently in the Egyptian Sahara on rock art left by prehistoric black-skinned populace, found in caves in the remote mountain regions of Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uwainat. The name, therefore, would then read “Land of the Black-skinned” or simple “Black Country”. These names tally with the notion that the earliest settlers of the Nile Valley were Negroid Africans who came from the Sahara around 5000 BCE. We are not suggesting, of course, that Egypt should now be called Kemet (although there are some who advocate that it should). What we do think, however, is that it important to highlight this original name so that modern Egyptians be reminded of their true ancestral origins and, more importantly, how perhaps its soul came to be.
Returning to the term “Arab”, this has vague origins. Strictly speaking, though, it should only denote the people who inhabit the Arabia Peninsula. Today the term is used to encompass most of the Middle East and the Levant. The Arab League, the Middle East’s equivalent of The United Nations, officially defines an Arab as being “a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic-speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic-speaking peoples.” Since modern Egypt has an Arabic-speaking population of eighty-six million people, making it by far the most legitimate candidate, if one goes by The Arab League’s definition, to be regarded as the quintessential “Arab State”. This is in any case reflected by official name it has given itself: The Arab Republic of Egypt (A.R.E). Strictly speaking, however, defining Egyptians as “Arabs” and Egypt an “Arab State” can only be historically correct after 642 CE i.e. after the Arab/Moslem invasion. Let us note that it is after 642 CE that the name of the country was changed to Misr. The terms Misr and Misrayin come from the Hebraic name “Mizraim” found in the Bible and used for “Egypt” by people of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. Foreign early civilizations and nations in the Middle East referred to the land of the pharaohs as Musri, Musur, or Misri. Even the biblical text personifies this name by associating the Egyptian civilization with a legendary eponymous founder named “Mizraim”—the son of Ham and grandson of Noah—(the Hebrew -im being a plural ending used to indicate “tribe of” or “descendants of”). So the Semitic-speaking peoples and even some of the Indo-European nations further north (such as the Hittites) knew Egypt as Musri, Misri, or Mizra. And from this come the classical Arabic (West-Semitic) name Misr (Egypt) and the more colloquial Arabic Masri (an Egyptian). The name Misr or Masr is used both for the country itself and, confusingly, also for the modern city of Cairo even though its official modern Arabic name is Al Kahira. Thus an Egyptian living in Cairo may claim to live at Misr, meaning the city of Cairo and not the country itself. Let us try, however, to now imagine “Egypt” before it became a state, before humans even settled there. Let us begin the search for its soul on a clean slate.
Seems those we now call Egyptians called themselves something entirely differently.
From Robert Bauval's new book The Soul of Ancient Egypt: Restoring the Spiritual Engine of the World
http://grahamhancock.com/bauvalosman1/
What’s in a Name?
When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, he pondered on the violent feud between the noble families of the Capulets and Montagues and their obsession with their name. This prompted the English bard to ask the rhetorical question: “what’s in a name?” He then gave his reply by saying “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”1 To an ancient Egyptian, however, such a concept would have been completely alien. Things had to be called by their correct allocated name and no other. For it was only the correct name and its proper utterance that made vocal the soul of the object or person so named. Names became talismans, magical devices imbued with an invisible, immaterial, and immeasurable energy that, when correctly dispatched, would force the mind to unleash the most potent of emotions and the deepest of thoughts. An Egyptian would not, therefore, hesitated to reply to Shakespeare question with those words: “to lose my name is to lose my soul.”
“Unlike modern society, the ancient Egyptians recognized the true importance of the name (Egyptian ren). Giving a name to a newborn was therefore a sacred act for any Egyptian parent. Speaking or writing his/her ren gave ‘existence’ to a person, both in life but also for eternity—so long as that name was perpetuated in eternal stone—to be read and uttered by devout descendants or a mere passersby. To chisel out or erase a name was to kill a person in the afterlife. To forget a name was to make it ‘non-existent’ . . . to the Egyptian mind, the ren was as important as the soul because, through the continuing memory of that name, the being—or on a grander scale the civilization bearing that name—continued to exist beyond time.”
Today the world refers to the long and narrow fertile strip running from the border of Sudan in the south to the shores of the Mediterranean in the north, as “Egypt.” This name is universally accepted as being true and correct for this country. As for the people who inhabit it today, they are called not only “Egyptians” but also “Arabs.” It thus often comes as a surprise when one is told that these names are not original or even native to this country. The name “Egypt” was coined by Greeks colons in the 4th century CE, and it is a corruption from the name Koptos, itself a corruption of Gebtu, the name of an ancient area in the south of the country, probably as ancient as 3000 BCE.” The name of the country that was most commonly used by the ancient Egyptians themselves was Kemet. According to Egyptologists, this name means “The Black Land”, and derives from the black alluvial soil which was deposited by the annual flooding of the river Nile.” But others contest this explanation, and propose that the name Kemet stems from the inhabitants themselves or, to be more precise, the color of their skin. It is highly likely that the original inhabitants of Egypt were dark or black-skinned Africans; a fact that can be ascertained even today by the dark-skinned Nubian people who live in the southern part of the country. That Kemet may indeed mean ‘The Land of the Blacks’ is also supported by discoveries made recently in the Egyptian Sahara on rock art left by prehistoric black-skinned populace, found in caves in the remote mountain regions of Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uwainat. The name, therefore, would then read “Land of the Black-skinned” or simple “Black Country”. These names tally with the notion that the earliest settlers of the Nile Valley were Negroid Africans who came from the Sahara around 5000 BCE. We are not suggesting, of course, that Egypt should now be called Kemet (although there are some who advocate that it should). What we do think, however, is that it important to highlight this original name so that modern Egyptians be reminded of their true ancestral origins and, more importantly, how perhaps its soul came to be.
Returning to the term “Arab”, this has vague origins. Strictly speaking, though, it should only denote the people who inhabit the Arabia Peninsula. Today the term is used to encompass most of the Middle East and the Levant. The Arab League, the Middle East’s equivalent of The United Nations, officially defines an Arab as being “a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic-speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic-speaking peoples.” Since modern Egypt has an Arabic-speaking population of eighty-six million people, making it by far the most legitimate candidate, if one goes by The Arab League’s definition, to be regarded as the quintessential “Arab State”. This is in any case reflected by official name it has given itself: The Arab Republic of Egypt (A.R.E). Strictly speaking, however, defining Egyptians as “Arabs” and Egypt an “Arab State” can only be historically correct after 642 CE i.e. after the Arab/Moslem invasion. Let us note that it is after 642 CE that the name of the country was changed to Misr. The terms Misr and Misrayin come from the Hebraic name “Mizraim” found in the Bible and used for “Egypt” by people of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. Foreign early civilizations and nations in the Middle East referred to the land of the pharaohs as Musri, Musur, or Misri. Even the biblical text personifies this name by associating the Egyptian civilization with a legendary eponymous founder named “Mizraim”—the son of Ham and grandson of Noah—(the Hebrew -im being a plural ending used to indicate “tribe of” or “descendants of”). So the Semitic-speaking peoples and even some of the Indo-European nations further north (such as the Hittites) knew Egypt as Musri, Misri, or Mizra. And from this come the classical Arabic (West-Semitic) name Misr (Egypt) and the more colloquial Arabic Masri (an Egyptian). The name Misr or Masr is used both for the country itself and, confusingly, also for the modern city of Cairo even though its official modern Arabic name is Al Kahira. Thus an Egyptian living in Cairo may claim to live at Misr, meaning the city of Cairo and not the country itself. Let us try, however, to now imagine “Egypt” before it became a state, before humans even settled there. Let us begin the search for its soul on a clean slate.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi