- The Meaning Of KEMET -
Every Nome (Town Or City) In Ancient Egypt Was Built And Named In Honor Of, Or Represented By, A God Or Goddess. Why Should This Toponym Be Any Different --- Especially When There's An Egyptian God Named Khem?
You’ve been told that the ‘black’ in Kem-et alludes to the fertile black silt of the Nile Valley, and not, as some have speculated, and others have wished, to the complexion of the indigenous populace of ancient North Africa. I wish to present an original hypothesis. Since Kemet is suffixed with the niwt determinative indicative of a town or city (Gardiner's O49, instead of the hieroglyph pertaining to land, N16), I propose that it cannot represent the land of Egypt, both Upper and Lower, in its entirety. Acknowledging the example bequeathed to us by the Greeks when they gave the name Egypt to its capital city of Memphis --- or, more precisely, to the temple of the God of that city --- (which subsequently came to designate the country in general), I assign the name Kemet to one nome in particular, which, like Memphis, was also named after a god (three gods in fact!). But here I refer to that god who also personified the fertility of the black silt : Min.
Herodotus wrote that Min “was the first human king of Egypt*”. [(History of Egypt, Bk II, 1.4). Compare On ]. I'm certainly not the first to associate the land of Egypt (henceforth Kemet) with an eponymous ancestor, since it was certainly the intention of the primary revisionists of Egyptian history (the LXX) to allege to its readers that Egypt's namesake was originally Mizraim (the Ugaritic name of Egypt), the son of HAM** (Gen. 10:6) --- a person, as opposed to a conspicuous feature of the country's landscape. And, of course, it's only logical that a land should be named after the king (or the God served by the king) who conquers a land. As the evidence set forth in my hypothesis suggests, Mene is a variant spelling of Men, Menu, or Min, and is therefore one of the first two theophorics born by an Egyptian king. The other being Horus.
*But not the first Pharaoh.
**Which means 'black'; therefore, a black person (or God) --- whose name was given to the land.
The Greek alphabet has no "H", thus the "H" sound is represented by the digraph "CH" (Χχ), pronounced like "Xai", or the hard English "Kay" (e.g., like the /K/ sound in chemistry; but not like the /CH/ in cherry). So Ham becomes Cham/Chem. The Israelites were sojourners in the "land" (Egyptian "ta/te") of "Chem" (Egyptian "Kem"), written as Kem-et, but in the Bible as "the land of Ham" (Ps. 105:23. Which is merely a revisionism of the original Egyptian Khem, and not to be accepted as an accurate historical substitute). Because the ancient Egyptian alphabet was basically consonantal, vowel sounds could be arbitrarily placed before or after a consonant. So "land" could also be written as 'at' or 'et' , giving us either "[the] black land" or "Khem's land".
In his Antiquity of the Jews, Josephus wrote that the Israelites took their journey by Letopolis (the Greek name for Khem), the capital of the 2nd nome of Lower Egypt (Bk 2, Chapter 15, Verse 1, [Ant. 1532]). The nome Khem is situated next to Memphis [the dividing point (or border) between Lower & Upper Egypt]. The JADEISTS possess proof that an altar and pillar to the Lord (Iah) had existed there probably since the times of Pepi I. (Read The Doctrine Of The Ineffable Name). According to the prophecies of Isaiah, the Israelites would return there --- to the "midst," or middle, of the land of Egypt (Isa. 19:19). That prophecy was indeed fulfilled --- in the 13th century before Christ!
It was Mene who united the two lands, and Mene who built Memphis, the first nome of Lower Egypt. The second nome of Lower Egypt was called Khensu, the capital of which was called Khem, an alternate appellation for Min. The reader can appreciate the significance of Khensu’s northern proximity to Memphis when it is recalled that its nome standard is the ‘cow’s thigh’, and that the northern constellation of the ‘bull’s thigh’ was crucial to the builders (followers of Ptah) who laid temple foundations during the night. Then there’s the fact that Min was also called the ‘Protector of the Moon’ (i.e., IAH), as well as being a patron god of Masons.
No one, including Plutarch, has yet produced physical evidence proving that the general population of Egypt referred to their land as Kemet since pre-dynastic times, or even before the commencement of the 10th dynasty. For it was during the 10th dynasty that a literary work was composed by the nomarch Keti, in which the word Kemet was used for the first time in relation to a coalition of nomes that extended across the north-south border, resulting in a third division of the land that was subsequently termed Middle Egypt. But until the Middle Kingdom (start date c. 2040 BC), Egypt was commonly referred to as "The Two Lands", especially by its kings! However, it is a fact that The Two Lands were referred to as Kemet [in the titulary of Seti I (d. c. 1280 BC)], before they took the singular designation of Egypt [by the Greeks during their colonization of Kemet (c. 7th century BC)]. In conclusion, my hypothesis demonstrates the plausibility that Kemet originally referred to the second nome of Lower Egypt only, then gradually came to encompass the Two Lands in their extremities.
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As final clarification concerning our stance on the matter, I submit that Jade Temple LTD does NOT use the name "Kemet" as a topographical allusion to the color of silt or soil. (Another reason why we don't subscribe to the black-silt definition is because, since the black silt was dependent upon the flooding of the Nile --- which was a sporadic and un-predictable event --- Kemet as a description of fertile land could not have been regularly and consistently applicable. Also, if it was just a matter of containing black, fertile soil, the Fertile Crescent could've just as well been called Kemet). Nor do we intend it as a modern, contemporary emphasis on ancient "Black Culture". Instead, we refer to Kemet in its original histo-political context, as an eponym of Khem the God, from whom the land derived its name. To be more precise, it's not simply "The Black Land"; it's Khem's land, as a geographical and political domain.
[Note: Further proof of Min's/Mene's association with lunar theology is preserved in the Greek etymology of the word moon].
