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Language of the Gods

Language of the Gods

Victoria Siegel

The Language of the Gods: How African Roots Shaped Our Words and Worlds

When Napoleon’s scholars uncovered the Rosetta Stone in 1800, they didn’t just find a key to hieroglyphs — they cracked open a silence 2,000 years old. Suddenly, we could hear the words of ancient Egypt again. But what most people don’t realize is that many of those words never truly went silent. They live on in our languages today.

Every time you write your name, blow out birthday candles, or read a fairy tale, you’re brushing up against echoes from Africa’s Nile Valley. The very idea of words as spells — spelling — comes straight from the Egyptian conviction that language held power over life, death, and rebirth.

Let’s follow a few of these words back to their roots:

🌞 Gold (Aur, Oro, Horus)

Gold was not just metal to Egyptians — it was the flesh of the gods. Eternal, indestructible, radiant like the sun.

  • Egyptian Hr/Hrw → Horus, the god of light and sky

  • Horus → horizon (where sun rises), “ray” of the sun

  • Hurasu (Jewish “gold”), Kuruso (Mycenaean Greek), Aur/Aurum (Latin), Oro (Spanish), Or (French)

  • Aurora → Roman goddess of dawn

  • “Au” → still the chemical symbol for gold

Gold in every language carries this solar + divine resonance. To wear gold was to borrow immortality from the sun.

🚪 Haram (From Window to Prison)

One word carries the history of women’s freedom being enclosed:

  • Harakim (Semitic: lattice, window) → a woman gazing outward

  • Herkos (Greek: enclosure, wall) → boundary

  • Horkane (Greek: prison)

  • Harem (English: group of women kept)

  • Haram (Arabic: forbidden, sacred, unlawful)

What began as an opening to the world — a lattice window — slowly became a cage. Language here preserves the story of how women’s roles shifted from visibility and independence to confinement and control.

🌍 Ntr (Nature, Nurture, Divine)

The Egyptian root ntr meant divine power — the sacred essence in gods, humans, and nature itself.

  • Ntr → “neter,” “nature”

  • Ntrt → “nurture,” linking women, fertility, and land

  • Through Greek → “physis” (nature), Latin → “natura”

  • Survives in words like natural, nurture, natal

Here the Egyptians saw no split between sacred and natural. To nurture a child, a crop, or a people was a holy act.

⚰️ Smt (Burial, Body, Always)

Burial was not seen as death but as reunion with the mother — the earth.

  • Smt / sm3t3 → “to unite with the land”

  • Greek sema (tomb), soma (body), semio (sign)

  • Latin semper (always), sepulcrum (burial place)

  • Spanish siempre (always)

Death was continuity. “Always” (semper) and “tomb” (sema) are linguistically the same root. Language here carries the Egyptian vision of eternal return.

🎶 Sacred Sound (hi-, hos-, iah-)

Egyptian roots show us that holiness, music, milk, and priesthood were all connected.

  • Iahi → priest

  • Iaht → mound, sacred place

  • Iahwt → official roles

  • Hsi → music, hos- → hosanna, hosios → divine law

Milk, mound, priest, music, purity — all woven from the same sacred sound family. To nourish body and soul was the same divine act.

✨ Why It Matters

Linguistics is archaeology with words. And what we uncover is not just etymology — it’s memory.

  • Gold as the divine sun

  • Haram as the cage built around women

  • Ntr as the fusion of nature and the sacred

  • Smt as the eternal cycle of life and death

  • Hi-/Hos- as nourishment and praise

Each word carries a story, each story carries a worldview.

If the Bible is one of humanity’s most influential texts, it’s worth noting that many of its words — Eden, Exodus, even the rivers of paradise — flow straight from the Nile. Josephus himself identified the Gihon river of Eden with the Nile. The paradise of beginnings was always African.

And just as Egypt’s floods gave humans time to look up at the stars, their language gave us the tools to name what we saw — and to dream what we could become.

The Nile still flows in our words.
Every story we tell, every name we write, every prayer we whisper is part of that ancient current.

👉 From here, we can easily spin diagrams like:

  • “Gold → Ra → Ray → Aurora → Au” (Sun/Gold cluster)

  • “Haram → Window → Enclosure → Prison → Forbidden” (Women/Control cluster)

  • “Ntr → Nature → Nurture → Natal” (Sacred Feminine cluster)

  • “Smt → Tomb → Body → Always” (Burial/Eternity cluster)

Root

Meaning

Descendants

RA

Egyptian Sun God, son of Isis

RA, Re, Ray, Ra-day (holiday), RA-diation

Hr/Hrw (Horus)

God of Light, Sky, Horizon

Horizon, Horology (time), Hours

Aur/Aurum

Latin for Gold

Au (chemical symbol), Oro (Spanish Gold), Or (French Gold)

Aurora

Roman goddess of Dawn

Aurora Borealis, Aurora (dawn)

Rey/Rex

King, Royal power

Reign, Royal, Reyes (Spanish Kings)

Radius

Measure from center (round, circle)

Radius, Radio, Radiate

Radiance

Shining light

Radiant, Radiology, Illumination

Ray

Beam of the Sun

Ray, Sunray, Array

Atlas of Sacred Roots

An Illustrated Journey Through the Language of the Gods

Layout & Structure

1. Introduction

  • A flowing essay that frames the Nile as the “Garden of Words.”

  • Establishes the premise: language, myth, religion, and science are deeply tied to African origins.

  • Quote from Josephus, then transition into Bernal’s Black Athena, tying in your thesis: Africa is the root system of our sacred vocabulary.

2. The Mandala of Roots

  • A full-page graphic wheel (like the RA/IS/AN diagrams you’ve already created).

  • Three sacred root radii:

    • RA (Sun/Light/King)

    • IS/ASH (Goddess/East/Mother)

    • AN (Year/Cycle/Fertility)

  • Small call-out boxes explaining how each root transforms across Egyptian, Semitic, Greek, Latin, and English.

3. The Tables of Transformation

  • Clean Excel-derived spreads (like what we’ve started together).

  • Each section introduced by a short essay.

  • Categories:

    • Important Terms (Cosmos, Earth, Gold, Mother, Queen, etc.)

    • Religious Terms (Amen, Spirit, Eucharist, etc.)

    • Daily Terms (Child, Door, Wheat, Myth, etc.)

    • Places (Athens, Israel, Europe, etc.)

    • Battle/Power (Hero, Karat, Nexus, etc.)

    • People & Gods (Adam, Isis, Zeus, Mary, Moses, Mithra, etc.)

    • Politics & Society (Democracy, Pharaoh, Pyramid, etc.)

Each table should feel like a Rosetta Stone-style chart, moving from inner root → outer languages → modern words.

4. Illustrated Threads

For each root cluster, include visual plates (like the ones we generated):

  • Ra/Sun words → rays, kings, horizons.

  • Is/Isis words → east, stars, queens, resurrection.

  • An/Year words → cyclical time, Annona, Nanna/Inanna.

  • Sacred Practices → orgy, hymn, sacrifice, sanctuary.

  • Cosmos Words → horizon, star, moon, night.

Each visual acts as both an artwork and a linguistic map.

5. Commentary Essays

Short interpretive essays throughout, weaving in:

  • The suppression of women in later religions.

  • How “virgin” shifted from daily renewal to sexual inexperience.

  • Egyptian concepts of writing as spells → “spelling” → sacred language.

  • The politics of etymology (e.g., Greeks “borrowed” vs. Egyptians “contaminated”).

  • Reflections on what happens when societies lose connection to their sacred roots (calendar shifts, food cycles, women silenced).

6. Conclusion: A Living Atlas

  • Return to metaphor of the Nile.

  • Words as rivers flowing outward.

  • A call to reframe religion not as division, but as shared heritage.

  • End with a circular visual tying together RA / IS / AN.

Design Recommendations

  • Fonts: Pair an elegant serif (e.g., Garamond) with a clean sans-serif (e.g., Gill Sans).

  • Color Palette: Deep indigo (night), golden ochre (sun), emerald (Nile).

  • Page Layout: Mix of text-heavy spreads and full-bleed visuals.

  • Imagery Style: The hand-painted and digital sacred mandalas you’ve made → polished with consistent framing.

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