Finshaggy
Well-Known Member
This thread is going to cover a couple thousand years. And the first post isn't everything.
The Ancient Africans of the Nile valley believed that knowledge was the way to life and the way to life led directly to the divine. Inner knowledge came from the search for the divine and wisdom was the result of inner knowledge.
By the time the Greeks found Egypt, the seat of Ancient Wisdom and Knowledge, the Ancient Egyptian philosophers had been reflecting on the nature of human relationships and the meaning of life for several thousand years. The works of these early African thinkers were referred to by the Egyptians as "Seboyet"
This thread will be about Seboyet, the base of Egyptian culture, society, tradition and religion.
Imotep... 2700 BC
The first person to have his individual life remembered, and the first lower class person known to have been promoted to god status after his death.
Also the first person recorded to have dealt with questions of: space, time, volume, the nature of illness, physical and mental disease, and immorality. The FIRST philosopher in human history.
But before we get into extensive detail about him, we must first discuss the culture surrounding him.
To understand how Egyptians saw the world, you must understand "spiritual interconnections".
To Egyptians, everything in the world was connected. You effect me, I effect you. And further, we effect them, and they effect us. On and on to the point of planets and stars being effected by our individual actions. Almost as if we are all on one big spider web, and each vibration we make as we move has a cosmic action, and not only that, our vibrations collect to form larger and stronger actions than we could have ever thought possible as an individual.
Also, it was held that agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry represented the most basic relationships one could have with nature or "the gods", therefor, the farmer is more divine than the merchant.
The Ancient Egyptians saw "Ra" as the creator of the universe, and "AtumRa" was the god who created himself before creating the universe. This view is more similar to the Big Bang theory than say, a mono theistic god, in the sense that Ra is one thing that all things burst forth from, and Ra most purely symbolizes Atomic light (like the light from the sun), which would have been present in the big bang (evidence of leftovers: stars, sun, etc).
Ra also symbolizes the sun. All life on Earth (except for small deep sea pockets) survive on plants and bacteria that create food and energy for this planet by collecting solar energy. So the Ancient Egyptians saw Ra as a force that flowed in and out of everything (like calories kinda).
Now, from this understanding comes another understanding.
Because 1 initial explosion created the universe, the universe is NOT a collection of planets, stars and floating rocks.
The universe is ONE GIANT thing. It is constantly still happening (an explosion that hasn't stopped yet) and we are all a part of it (each and every star, planet and stone). We are the last embers of a forest fire that has been raging for billions of years.
So, even though we see the Egyptians as Polytheistic, if you put all the gods together like a puzzle, they actually come together (like a story) to describe one "god" (the universe).
Now, this is where it gets hard to follow. You may FEEL like you are following, but you have to come at this with an open mind.
Harmony. In song, harmony is achieved when 2 people hit the same note/pitch at the same time. In Africa, people use harmony in dance, music and solo performances (they can harmonize different parts of their body in song or dance)
This definition carries on outside of song. Harmony is achieved when 2 people want the same thing at the same time.
To help you understand:
In the Christian Bible, it says that when 2 or more people are gathered in gods name, he is present. If you think about this rationally, all it really means is "when 2 people work together, they can do more than they ever could have as individuals".
This is a HUGE part of the African mentality. A perfect example of this is modern day "Ujamaa". And in Africa people understand that harmony comes through movement (which is why you see tribes doing weird dances for fun on shows like "An Idiot Abroad" )
Now, with this understanding of the Universe, and this understanding of harmony, I want to give an example so that you can understand the impact of these beliefs.
Western Culture (which historically has been white) conquers... African culture, absorbs.
The universe is one thing, the world is one thing, humanity is one thing. As the white man conquers, the world learns his secrets (just as western civilization stole the secrets of Ancient Egypt). Time is cyclical.
All knowledge is absorbed, and almost no outsiders are rejected by popular culture.
Ok, we are getting closer to understanding the way these philosophers saw the world... This next one is MAJOR.
I will start with an example. The Native American Indians. They did not need to store things, because they had their herds to follow. They had no need for war, because there was nothing to take (they did have small feuds, but nothing like the war of white culture).
Western Culture sees everything as "Past, Present, Future".
Ancient Cultures (and some that still exist) saw things as "Orientational, Ancestral or Habitual."
Habitual is easy to understand. It is something you must do, or something you personally do in modern times.
Orientational.
Human beings are oriented towards posterity. So, this can be seen as things done for children, society, the betterment of the world. (a different kind of future than western culture worries about)
Ancestral.
Things that are done because they were always done that way and that's how it works (stories passed down, etc). A view of the "past" that is much less forgetful than our western one.
Further, African philosophy did not allow for the disposal and forgetting of bodies.
Ex: If the word "community" were to be used, it does not simply include the living beings and their duties, it also included the dead and the operations they took care of within the society.
They did not think of someone as dead. When prayers are said to their ancestors, it has always been an invitation with an expectation of participation. There was no past, present, and future. The dead, the living and the unborn were all one.
Early Egyptian concepts:
Ankh (The most Popularly used Egyptian Glyph)-
Life, Living, Presence, and Existence.
Seneb-
Wellness/Health
Djeb-
Stability
Heheh-
Eternity (the everlasting present moment that is happening forever as your cells multiply & decay and the planets rotate around the stars)
Neter-
God, The Divine, Diety
Meri-
Love
Now, the Origins of Philosophy.
The Ancient Egyptians great minds became the first known philosophers and the stone on which all future recorded philosophical foundation was built,through a search for Harmony/Balance, which could ensure Stability.
This led to the beginning of science.
Science is basically the art of experience. Trial and error/Practice makes perfect. So, the Ancient Egyptians drew their knowledge from many cultures in Africa that had come before them, which allowed them to view the world with more wisdom and understanding than their ancestors.
Along the Nile lived some of the first known civilizations to get along while living in the exact same place without killing each other AND without being killed by their environment.
The longest river and the largest desert can both be found in Africa. Think of the impact this had on the human mind. Vast expanses of SHIT, and one giant paradise.
The river was even a deity. Known as "Hapi".
Egyptian seasons were not based on the sun, moon or outside temperature, but rather the river.
The river gave them what we today would call "Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall"
The Nile overflowed every year starting in June, this was known as "Innudation".
The waters reached a peak, and would begin to recede, this was known as "Emergence".
That lasted until about February, which was known as "Drought".
During Emergence, the Egyptians would trap water in man made lakes to be used later for irrigation (watering their farms), and they would use the soft fertile soil left by the river to plant seeds.
During Innudation, the farmers would become builders and artisans to earn a living.
There were people that would measure the height of the river, and give updates on rising flood waters. They could sit up stream, and signal miles away what was going to happen down stream. Based on volume of water, and size of the river in that area.
Therefor, experts in Aswan could make predictions and tell the people near Abydos how much food they would need to harvest that year.
Everything depended on their predictions, if the Nile was not going to have enough water one year, the farmers would have to walk with buckets to retrieve the water they needed to store.
The Ancient African people affectionately called their land "Kemet" (that is the Ancient Egyptian word or Egypt), which translate into "Land of the Blacks". The Greeks later gave it the name "Aegyptos".
To understand philosophers AFTER Imhotep but before Plato, you must understand that Egypt had established how the universe was created, so the questions of life and death no longer included the pondering of creation.
The big bang theory (The Theory of all of the universe bursting forth from "Ra" who is the god that represents solar energy).
Creation of Earth, everything was at one point fluid and the solid land formed out of the waters (Legend of Amen and Ptah)
Here is the gist of their myth. The Earth was in the Center of the planet, and was completely covered by water. Mist above the water, and all of it was on fire. The fire heating the water caused it to evaporate, the as it evaporated, dry land came to be seen underneath. So, basically: Magma touches water, land is formed.
So the only real question they had left to answer was human purpose.
In the Ancient African mind, the universe was one. And the ONLY way for it to make sense, was for everything to come together. Meaning, everything needs to co-operate, seeing as it is all part of the same, so conflict does not help anything.
The struggle for this is called "Ma'at" and the goal of Ma'at was to get the universe operating at its original state (one solid unit).
When you say a Christian prayer and end it with "Amen", you are giving a tip of your hat to the Egyptian creation god "Amen".
Egyptians understood the idea of actualization (Western culture might call it "Maturing" or "Growing up", but the idea is not the same). It is represented by the Scarab Beetle, Khepri, who is first an egg, a larva and a nymph before it can ever fly.
This was a very important observation to the ancient Egyptians, as they could see the importance of youth and the roles of others in society.
They believed that the scarab beetles representation held the key to the meanings of transformation, evolution and even political radicalization or revolution. Nothing is ever static, and harmony can be found only in movement.
This is going to be impossible for some people to accept, but this is a huge part of understanding the mind of an Ancient Egyptian.
There is no such thing as "magic" in the mystical sense.
Magic is simply the use of words... The creation of language, the exchange of ideas, the movement of culture.
To put it simply, the magic words to make a cold drink appear are "Can you get me a drink from the fridge?"
Now, maybe sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. But the important part is that you have the ability to take an idea, transport it into the universe via language, then someone else can accept that idea and it can have a reaction in society.
Ta-da. Magic
Now we can finally get to Imhotep, since these past 2 pages of posts pretty well explain the mentality of someone living where and when he lived.
Imhotep is one of the first HUMAN non noble names to appear in human history (the Dead Sea Scrolls aka the Bible, was written at least 2000 years after Imhotep died and was written about, so no one can say "What about Adam and Eve).
And he stands near the top of history in terms of genius.
He was the FIRST master builder in history. Most of the things you imagine when you picture Egypt (the pyramids, the columns, etc) were all inventions that were accredited to him.
But sadly Imhotep is like Socrates, in the sense that he was not an author (or his writings were destroyed by invaders), so the only information we have about him is from other people's writings.
But he was a great physician, as well as one of the first people to diagnose, treat, and pass down information about disease.
He was also an amazing mathematician, he invented so many of the early measuring devices that much of Egypt (even stuff that happened after he died) would not have been possible without his contributions. And during his lifetime he was able to properly devise, and explain the plans for building things that had never even been dreamed of by anyone else.
One can not truly understand what it means to appreciate history, without understanding and appreciating Imhotep's work on the Step Pyramid.
This Pyramid was a place where the leaders of the nation could hold conference with the gods, and the body of the Pharaoh could be preserved after death. Which in no little way, is responsible for much of the stability and literacy (mainly philosophical literature) of much of the world after. Because without the step pyramid, there is only the Nile holding Egypt together as a nation. Without the step pyramid, there is not writings of the afterlife for later cultures to come study. There is no ancient knowledge to be passed on to Plato, then to Greece.
Imhotep and his constructive abilities are responsible for the introduction of large scale city planning to human kind, as well as some of the first national monuments.
The Ancient Africans of the Nile valley believed that knowledge was the way to life and the way to life led directly to the divine. Inner knowledge came from the search for the divine and wisdom was the result of inner knowledge.
By the time the Greeks found Egypt, the seat of Ancient Wisdom and Knowledge, the Ancient Egyptian philosophers had been reflecting on the nature of human relationships and the meaning of life for several thousand years. The works of these early African thinkers were referred to by the Egyptians as "Seboyet"
This thread will be about Seboyet, the base of Egyptian culture, society, tradition and religion.
Imotep... 2700 BC
The first person to have his individual life remembered, and the first lower class person known to have been promoted to god status after his death.
Also the first person recorded to have dealt with questions of: space, time, volume, the nature of illness, physical and mental disease, and immorality. The FIRST philosopher in human history.
But before we get into extensive detail about him, we must first discuss the culture surrounding him.
To understand how Egyptians saw the world, you must understand "spiritual interconnections".
To Egyptians, everything in the world was connected. You effect me, I effect you. And further, we effect them, and they effect us. On and on to the point of planets and stars being effected by our individual actions. Almost as if we are all on one big spider web, and each vibration we make as we move has a cosmic action, and not only that, our vibrations collect to form larger and stronger actions than we could have ever thought possible as an individual.
Also, it was held that agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry represented the most basic relationships one could have with nature or "the gods", therefor, the farmer is more divine than the merchant.
The Ancient Egyptians saw "Ra" as the creator of the universe, and "AtumRa" was the god who created himself before creating the universe. This view is more similar to the Big Bang theory than say, a mono theistic god, in the sense that Ra is one thing that all things burst forth from, and Ra most purely symbolizes Atomic light (like the light from the sun), which would have been present in the big bang (evidence of leftovers: stars, sun, etc).
Ra also symbolizes the sun. All life on Earth (except for small deep sea pockets) survive on plants and bacteria that create food and energy for this planet by collecting solar energy. So the Ancient Egyptians saw Ra as a force that flowed in and out of everything (like calories kinda).
Now, from this understanding comes another understanding.
Because 1 initial explosion created the universe, the universe is NOT a collection of planets, stars and floating rocks.
The universe is ONE GIANT thing. It is constantly still happening (an explosion that hasn't stopped yet) and we are all a part of it (each and every star, planet and stone). We are the last embers of a forest fire that has been raging for billions of years.
So, even though we see the Egyptians as Polytheistic, if you put all the gods together like a puzzle, they actually come together (like a story) to describe one "god" (the universe).
Now, this is where it gets hard to follow. You may FEEL like you are following, but you have to come at this with an open mind.
Harmony. In song, harmony is achieved when 2 people hit the same note/pitch at the same time. In Africa, people use harmony in dance, music and solo performances (they can harmonize different parts of their body in song or dance)
This definition carries on outside of song. Harmony is achieved when 2 people want the same thing at the same time.
To help you understand:
In the Christian Bible, it says that when 2 or more people are gathered in gods name, he is present. If you think about this rationally, all it really means is "when 2 people work together, they can do more than they ever could have as individuals".
This is a HUGE part of the African mentality. A perfect example of this is modern day "Ujamaa". And in Africa people understand that harmony comes through movement (which is why you see tribes doing weird dances for fun on shows like "An Idiot Abroad" )
Now, with this understanding of the Universe, and this understanding of harmony, I want to give an example so that you can understand the impact of these beliefs.
Western Culture (which historically has been white) conquers... African culture, absorbs.
The universe is one thing, the world is one thing, humanity is one thing. As the white man conquers, the world learns his secrets (just as western civilization stole the secrets of Ancient Egypt). Time is cyclical.
All knowledge is absorbed, and almost no outsiders are rejected by popular culture.
Ok, we are getting closer to understanding the way these philosophers saw the world... This next one is MAJOR.
I will start with an example. The Native American Indians. They did not need to store things, because they had their herds to follow. They had no need for war, because there was nothing to take (they did have small feuds, but nothing like the war of white culture).
Western Culture sees everything as "Past, Present, Future".
Ancient Cultures (and some that still exist) saw things as "Orientational, Ancestral or Habitual."
Habitual is easy to understand. It is something you must do, or something you personally do in modern times.
Orientational.
Human beings are oriented towards posterity. So, this can be seen as things done for children, society, the betterment of the world. (a different kind of future than western culture worries about)
Ancestral.
Things that are done because they were always done that way and that's how it works (stories passed down, etc). A view of the "past" that is much less forgetful than our western one.
Further, African philosophy did not allow for the disposal and forgetting of bodies.
Ex: If the word "community" were to be used, it does not simply include the living beings and their duties, it also included the dead and the operations they took care of within the society.
They did not think of someone as dead. When prayers are said to their ancestors, it has always been an invitation with an expectation of participation. There was no past, present, and future. The dead, the living and the unborn were all one.
Early Egyptian concepts:
Ankh (The most Popularly used Egyptian Glyph)-
Life, Living, Presence, and Existence.
Seneb-
Wellness/Health
Djeb-
Stability
Heheh-
Eternity (the everlasting present moment that is happening forever as your cells multiply & decay and the planets rotate around the stars)
Neter-
God, The Divine, Diety
Meri-
Love
Now, the Origins of Philosophy.
The Ancient Egyptians great minds became the first known philosophers and the stone on which all future recorded philosophical foundation was built,through a search for Harmony/Balance, which could ensure Stability.
This led to the beginning of science.
Science is basically the art of experience. Trial and error/Practice makes perfect. So, the Ancient Egyptians drew their knowledge from many cultures in Africa that had come before them, which allowed them to view the world with more wisdom and understanding than their ancestors.
Along the Nile lived some of the first known civilizations to get along while living in the exact same place without killing each other AND without being killed by their environment.
The longest river and the largest desert can both be found in Africa. Think of the impact this had on the human mind. Vast expanses of SHIT, and one giant paradise.
The river was even a deity. Known as "Hapi".
Egyptian seasons were not based on the sun, moon or outside temperature, but rather the river.
The river gave them what we today would call "Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall"
The Nile overflowed every year starting in June, this was known as "Innudation".
The waters reached a peak, and would begin to recede, this was known as "Emergence".
That lasted until about February, which was known as "Drought".
During Emergence, the Egyptians would trap water in man made lakes to be used later for irrigation (watering their farms), and they would use the soft fertile soil left by the river to plant seeds.
During Innudation, the farmers would become builders and artisans to earn a living.
There were people that would measure the height of the river, and give updates on rising flood waters. They could sit up stream, and signal miles away what was going to happen down stream. Based on volume of water, and size of the river in that area.
Therefor, experts in Aswan could make predictions and tell the people near Abydos how much food they would need to harvest that year.
Everything depended on their predictions, if the Nile was not going to have enough water one year, the farmers would have to walk with buckets to retrieve the water they needed to store.
The Ancient African people affectionately called their land "Kemet" (that is the Ancient Egyptian word or Egypt), which translate into "Land of the Blacks". The Greeks later gave it the name "Aegyptos".
To understand philosophers AFTER Imhotep but before Plato, you must understand that Egypt had established how the universe was created, so the questions of life and death no longer included the pondering of creation.
The big bang theory (The Theory of all of the universe bursting forth from "Ra" who is the god that represents solar energy).
Creation of Earth, everything was at one point fluid and the solid land formed out of the waters (Legend of Amen and Ptah)
Here is the gist of their myth. The Earth was in the Center of the planet, and was completely covered by water. Mist above the water, and all of it was on fire. The fire heating the water caused it to evaporate, the as it evaporated, dry land came to be seen underneath. So, basically: Magma touches water, land is formed.
So the only real question they had left to answer was human purpose.
In the Ancient African mind, the universe was one. And the ONLY way for it to make sense, was for everything to come together. Meaning, everything needs to co-operate, seeing as it is all part of the same, so conflict does not help anything.
The struggle for this is called "Ma'at" and the goal of Ma'at was to get the universe operating at its original state (one solid unit).
When you say a Christian prayer and end it with "Amen", you are giving a tip of your hat to the Egyptian creation god "Amen".
Egyptians understood the idea of actualization (Western culture might call it "Maturing" or "Growing up", but the idea is not the same). It is represented by the Scarab Beetle, Khepri, who is first an egg, a larva and a nymph before it can ever fly.
This was a very important observation to the ancient Egyptians, as they could see the importance of youth and the roles of others in society.
They believed that the scarab beetles representation held the key to the meanings of transformation, evolution and even political radicalization or revolution. Nothing is ever static, and harmony can be found only in movement.
This is going to be impossible for some people to accept, but this is a huge part of understanding the mind of an Ancient Egyptian.
There is no such thing as "magic" in the mystical sense.
Magic is simply the use of words... The creation of language, the exchange of ideas, the movement of culture.
To put it simply, the magic words to make a cold drink appear are "Can you get me a drink from the fridge?"
Now, maybe sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. But the important part is that you have the ability to take an idea, transport it into the universe via language, then someone else can accept that idea and it can have a reaction in society.
Ta-da. Magic
Now we can finally get to Imhotep, since these past 2 pages of posts pretty well explain the mentality of someone living where and when he lived.
Imhotep is one of the first HUMAN non noble names to appear in human history (the Dead Sea Scrolls aka the Bible, was written at least 2000 years after Imhotep died and was written about, so no one can say "What about Adam and Eve).
And he stands near the top of history in terms of genius.
He was the FIRST master builder in history. Most of the things you imagine when you picture Egypt (the pyramids, the columns, etc) were all inventions that were accredited to him.
But sadly Imhotep is like Socrates, in the sense that he was not an author (or his writings were destroyed by invaders), so the only information we have about him is from other people's writings.
But he was a great physician, as well as one of the first people to diagnose, treat, and pass down information about disease.
He was also an amazing mathematician, he invented so many of the early measuring devices that much of Egypt (even stuff that happened after he died) would not have been possible without his contributions. And during his lifetime he was able to properly devise, and explain the plans for building things that had never even been dreamed of by anyone else.
One can not truly understand what it means to appreciate history, without understanding and appreciating Imhotep's work on the Step Pyramid.
This Pyramid was a place where the leaders of the nation could hold conference with the gods, and the body of the Pharaoh could be preserved after death. Which in no little way, is responsible for much of the stability and literacy (mainly philosophical literature) of much of the world after. Because without the step pyramid, there is only the Nile holding Egypt together as a nation. Without the step pyramid, there is not writings of the afterlife for later cultures to come study. There is no ancient knowledge to be passed on to Plato, then to Greece.
Imhotep and his constructive abilities are responsible for the introduction of large scale city planning to human kind, as well as some of the first national monuments.
