chayah bayith elowahh

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Mr. Franklin says, "Another striking instance is recorded by the very intelligent traveller (Wilson) regarding a representation of the fall of our first parents, sculptured in the magnificent temple of Ipsambul in Nubia. He says that a very exact representation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is to be seen in that cave, and that the serpent climbing the tree is especially delineated, and the whole subject of the tempting of our first parents most accurately exhibited."

HEBREWISMS OF WEST AFRICA

ASHANTI INFLUENCE ON JAMAICA CUSTOMS

pg 15] It is interesting to find Sir Harry Johnston insisting: " The Elamites of Mesopotamia appear to have been a negroid people with kinky hair, and to have transmitted this racial type to the Jews and Syrians,"Harry H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World, London, 1910

ASHANTI HEBREWISMS

pg 44] 8"The origin of the terms Obeah and Obi may be traced to the Canaanitish superstition of the Ob or Oub, which Bryant has so ingeniously detected in his remarks upon the witch Endor."

It was probably from Canaanitish origin also that the Hebrew word'OB was derived, and the

"Amen" pg 51] In his work on Ashanti proverbs, Captain Rattray cites an Ashanti hymn of thanksgiving to the Suprem Being. It closes with the word Amen which, however, he avers,"it would be erroneous to ascribe to Christian origin."

Derivation of Ashanti pg 60] The very name Ashanti has itself a strong Hebraic flavor. For, while some would derive the word from "Shan" the name of a plant, and "dti," to eat, claiming that the title must have been acquired in the time of a great famine, when they found sustenance in the plant in question, this is mere guess work. Actually, the termination"ti" or "tie" in the names of West African Tribes has usually the general meaning of "the race of," "the men of," " the children of." This would make Ashanti, "the people of Ashan." There was as a fact, a town of the name Ashan in the domain of Juda.

pg 61] The primary meaning of the Hebrew word ASHAN is smoke, and it is used primarily of a burning city; and secondly figuratively of the destruction of Israel.

Yahoodee (Yahuda-Juda) pg 64] Later, while criticizing a map that had been published by T. Edward Bowditch in 1819, he says: " Beginning then at the top of the map, I find a place called Yahoodee, a country or town of non-existence. Yahoodee simply implies Jews, the tribes of Jews, etc. which term the Moslems apply to those people of the mosaic faith who inhabit the lower Atlas, and the districts of Suse. They also apply the term Yahoodee to the Hebrew or Jewish tribes, whether native Africans or not, who inhabit Maroa"Marroa", some parts of Fillany(Fulani), and the neighborhood of Timbuctoo....

In passing, it should be remarked, that whenever it is at all possible, Dupuis takes exception to the statements of Bowditch, and aligns himself against his predecessor's view. It should also be remembered that Dupuis is drawing his information for the most part from Moors, while Bowditch records the traditions of the Ashanti themselves. In the present instance, however, Bowditch would appear to have the better claim for credibility, as only six years after the publication of Dupuis' criticism, it was emphatically refuted by two travellers who actually passed along the Niger and entered in their Journal under date of Wednesday, July 7, 1830: Yahoorie (sic) is a large, flourishing and united kingdom. It is bounded on the east by Haussa, on the west by Borgoo, on the north by Cubbie, and on the south by the kingdom of Nouffie."

The position indicated by the travcellers ion the map, would place it on the Niger River, about midway bewtween the present Bussa and Gomba, in Northern Nigeria. Richard and John Lander, Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger, London, 1838, vol 1, p. 240

THE SUPREME BEING OF THE ASHANTI

Misnefet pg 82] We have a remarkable sketch of this breastplate, which appeared originally in the Illustrsted London News, and was reproduced without any acknowledgment by Sir Henry M. Stanley in his volume entitled Coomassie and Magdala. It is ascribe "Ashanti Ambassadors Crossing the Prah." The breastplate on the central figure, the Herald (Osene), who is called by Stanley the town-crier, is strikingly similar to the breastplate of the High Priest among the ancient Hebrews, even to its division into twelve parts.

The head-dress of the Herald, too, with its gold disc in front satisfies the description of the miznefet, as given in the Jewish Encyclopedia, " tiara, or perhaps, a peculiarly wound turban, with a peak, the front of which bore a gold plate with the inscription ' Holy unto Yhwh.'"

pg 84] Once more, hvae the twelve divisions on the breastplate anything to do with the tradition recorded by Bowditch, and extended by Beecham, that the Ashanti and allied peoples were originally derived from twelve tribes or families? Another possible indication of some affinity with the twelve tribes of Israel!

OTHER HEBREWISMS OF WEST AFRICA

pg 100] some of the leading features of which are circumcision, the division of tribes into seperate families, and very frequently into the number twelve; the rigid interdiction of marriage between families too nearly related; bloody sacrifices, with the sprinkling of blood upon the altars and door post; a specified time for mourning the dead, during which they shave their heads, and wear soiled and tattered clothes; demoniacal possessions, purificatuiions and various other usages, probably of a Jewish origin.

Another witness who spent seven years among the Blacks of the Slave Coast equally positive in his assertion. After remarking that D'Anville's map states that the country of the Nagos was formely inhabited by Jews, and that this view was adopted by Edrisi, an Arab traveller of the eleventh centuryt, he briefly adds: "One finds among the blacks many Jewish customs."

pg 102] Professor Keller of Yale University, relying in great part on data gathered by William Graham Summer, while treating of "Disguise and other Forms of Mourning," places many West African funeral customs in the same class with the ritual "sackcloth and ashes" of the Old Testament....

Again he finds the Yoruba ako-ojo (first-day) and similar days of rest in other West African tribes analogous to the Hebraic Sabbath with its death-penalty for violators.

pg 107] Lieutenant Desplagnes, speaking of the traces of Mediterranean civilization to be found in West Africa, notes that M.P. Standinger published in 1906, "an interesting study which shows the conformity and identifies the ancient manufactured glass in Palestine with certain glass objects still made at Nupe or Nufe in West Soudan, where this industry had been carried on, as tradition declares by Jewish colonies."

Desplagnes also reproduces some window shutters carved with figures that are distinctively Semitic in their appearance. In one instance the figures are crowned with mitres, which he declares" represent the divine triad." They are not unlike the mitre of the High Priest ofthe Hebrews, as described by Josephus. Above the miznefet of the other priests, "there was another, with swathes of blue embroidered, and round it was a golden crown polished of three rows, one above another; out of which arose a cup of gold." Louis Desplagnes, Le Plateau Central Nigererien, Paris, 1907 p 135

MYSTERIES OF THE DESERT

Ghana

pg 228] " Their title Ghana, from which their capital took its name, has nothing Arabic about it. 'Perhaps it belonged to the language of the first founders of the Empire of Ghana, that is to say the language which without doubt was made up at the time of Aramean, Egyptian and Berber elements, that Judaeo-Syrians spoke when they arrived in Aoukar.'

Does not a Jew of the Tribe of Dan, who had been from Kairouan to the country of the Cannibals, tell us in the ninth century of a Jewish Empire in the Sahara which extended over a two hundred days' march? According to this Eldad the Danite they had there in the interior of Africa a language seemingly phoenician, a religion which was that of Joshua and a Jewish Emperor. This Emperor, elsewhere called Tloutan or Boulatan ben Tiklan, was converted in 837 to Islamism and began an era of sanguinary conflicts with the neighboring tribes, Jewish or otherwise."

THE FLESH POTS OF EGYPT

pg 281] At a much earlier date, John Pory in publishing an English translation of Leo Africanus, subjoins a discourse which he entitles: "A Summarie discourse of the manifold Religions professed in Africa." Herein, after repeating the Abyssinian story of the origin of the House of Menilek, he adds: "At this day also the Abassins affirm that upon the Nilus towards the West, there inhabiteth a most populous nation of the Jewish stock, under a mightie King. And some of our modern cosmographers set down a province in those quarters, which they call the land of the Hebrews, placed as it wee under the equinoctial, in certain unknown mountains, bewtween the confines of Abassin and Congo."John Pory, A Geographical Historie of Africa. London 1600 p.179

THE LONG TREK

pg 292] John Ogilby, " Master of His Majesties Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland," published in 1679 a volume on Africa, wherein he speaks of the Coast of Guinea as follows: "Many Jews also are scattered over this region; some natives, boasting themsleves of Abraham's seed, inhabiting both sides of the River Niger.

CONCLUSIONS

pg 320 The Hebrew cultural elements are not isolated instances among the Ashanti, but are to be found in less degrree broadcast through Negro Land, is shown from similar traits in other tribes. Thus, for example, in floggings, the traditional number of strokes, "forty less one"; the common pratice of New-Moon festivals; the oath-drink akin to the scriptural"bitter waters"; expectation of a Messais; Jewish distinction between diaboli and daemonia; the doudecimal divisions of tribes into families; exogamy; bloody sacrifices with the sprinkling of blood upon altar and door-posts; mourning customs; obessions; legal defilement; Jewish octave; law on adultery; Sabbath rest; Levirate marriages; circumcision; priestly garb; etc. While the glass manufactured at Nupe and the carvings on window shutters indicate a Palestinian influence, the terr-cotta heads found in Yoruba postulate ultimately a Memphititc influx of culture.

A new Kingdom

pg 327] Long before all this had happened, however, south of the Sahara, a Jewish Kingdom had arisen, flourished for several centuries, and then been so entirely obliterated that its very existence was long questioned and the site of its capital has only quite recently been located. This Jewish Kingdom of Ghana, asserting as it did the mastery over the greater part of Negro Land, must have a widespread influence on the Negro customs and manners almost to the Coast of Guinea.

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