Monday, April 1, 2024

Egypt and Japan (April Fools Day Post)

The surviving ancient depictions of Queen Nefertiti the wife of Akhenaton are kind of an Ethnic Rorshaq test.  In my time browsing the fringes of the Internet I’ve seen Afrocentrist Websites place one up with certainty that any unbiased observer would conclude she looks like a Sub Saharan Black African woman, and I’ve seen White Supremacists show the same images with equal confidence that she looks like a Blond Haired Blue Eyed Aryan.  Meanwhile I as a Weeb look at them and see Sanae Horikawa.

Now I have no actual desire to argue that any inhabitants of the Japanese islands (Yamato, Ainu or Ryukyuan) are the true rightful heirs of Ancient Egypt rather than the Copts. But as seemingly the only person in the Venn Diagram of people who are 1. Weebs, 2. Well informed of how Lost Tribes style fringe history works, and 3. Know more than the average person about Ancient Egypt.  I feel like making the argument facetiously just to show how easy it is to make up the more serious versions.

Japan’s own mythology presents the coming of their ancestors to Japan as fairly recent in the grand scheme of Human History with the first Emperor Jimmu starting his reign in 660 BC and being born 711 BC though it was his Great Grandfather Ninigi who led the first migration to western Japan (mainstream historian and Archaeologists believe distinctly Yamato culture started even later).  That makes the beginning of Japanese history roughly contemporary with the latter part of the Third Intermediate Period of Egyptian History, the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms already in the past, and when Assyria Conquered Egypt for a time prompting the Biblical Prophet Nahum to claim they carried the Egyptian away into Captivity.

The potential to confuse the sounds represented by the letter L and R is not unique to Japan or East Asia.  Since childhood long before I became interested in Anime or learned this was ever a thing over there I have always misheard the L in the middle of the word Colonel as a R and so was initially unable to recognize the word when I read it.  And what’s relevant here is that Ancient Egyptian also seems to have not distinguished between them.

The Hebrew name for Egypt used in The Bible is Mitsraim, the -aim at the end is a suffix that makes it a duel possibly referring to the dual nature of Egypt, Upper and Lower.  The Japanese word for Festival is Matsuri which looks like it could be similar to a singular form of Mistraim.  Japan also had at times been divided between north and south.

Any famous Egyptian name that ends with an S in how they’re popularly rendered today probably didn’t originally, like some similar Biblical names; it's a carry over from their Hellenized forms. Ancient Egyptian is a dead language so we're not always sure about the proper pronunciation.  But one proposed theory on the proper form of Horus is Haru.  Horus was sometimes in some contexts a Solar Deity.  Haru is the pronunciation of a few different Kanji, and they have meanings like Spring, Springtime and Sunny reflecting association with the Sun.

Speaking of The Sun, Ancient Egypt and Japan both have a history of artistically depicting the Sun as Red rather than the usual Yellow.

Moshe, the name of Moses, is a loan word from Egyptian that in its Exodus 2 context can be associated with Water.  Mizu is one way of saying the Japanese Kanji for Water.

But comparative mythology is where things get really interesting.

Concepts in Shintoism like the Hitorigami and Kamiyonayo could be compared to Egyptian concepts like the Ennead, the same Egyptian ideas that helped inspire the Aeons of Gnostic Cosmologies.  Any of the Zoka Sanshin could be compared to Ptah, and Atum-Ra can be identified with Izanagi and Izanami with Ammit given her final role in the Underworld.

When Izanagi cleanses himself after his trip to the Underworld three deities were created.  Susanoo came from the air out of his Nose, Amaterasu the Goddess of the Sun from one eye and Tsukuyomi the god of the Moon from the other eye.

That has parallels in Egyptian Mythology where Shu is a god of the Air formed from Atum sneezing, while a female Solar Deity known as the Eye of Ra and a Moon Deity were born of Ra’s Eyes.

A number of different named Egyptian Goddesses are sometimes identified with the Eye of Ra, but the most compelling one for our purposes here is Hathor who as the wife of Horus and mother of Horus’s children was a Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Pharaohs, just like Amaterasu as the ancestor of the Japanese Emperors.

However the idea of Male Solar deities isn't completely unknown in Japanese mythology as Sarutahiko Okami, leader of the Earthly Kami was also worshiped as a Sun god and was married to the Dawn Goddess Uzume.

Ryujin the Dragon god and King of the Oceans could be compared to Khnum or Sobek.  But I also think about Ezekiel 29 calling the Pharaoh of Egypt the Great Dragon.  Egypt was a Patriarchal Society but for much of its history the Royal Succession was matrilineal.  So Jimmu descending from two daughters of Ryujin could be a mythologized memory of his Royal Succession from a late TIP Dynasty.  It could be that the complicated Ninigi-Jimmu genealogy reflects a fusing of multiple dynasties.

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