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The
cardinal directions of a nation or culture express the geographic orientation,
and outlook of the group to their local and larger surroundings. In
the classical African framework, man and his cardinal directions were
the opposite of what we find today. The simple proof of this orientation
is preserved in the written records from the Old Empire of the Ancient
Egyptian’s civilization. The precise vocabulary they used indicated that man’s body and his geographic systems were oriented towards the Source of the Nile and the ancestoral cultures of the African interior, and not the Mediterranean which might be expected. I say man’s body because the vocabulary which defines the left and right hand has a linguistic kinship with the vocabulary describing the directions East and West. (See ill. I). In the old Egyptian language, one finds that the right hand was called wnmy and the left hand was called iaby. The old Nubian-Egyptians called the West imnt and the East was iabt. So, if one morning we rise up like an Ancient Egyptian, and stand so our iaby (left) side is facing the rising sun. We will find that we are facing upstream ('south'). |
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| Illustration I. |
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| Illustration II. |
| Copyright (c) 2004,
Alexander Derrick All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or be any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior permission of Alexander Derrick (low_stress@hotmail.com) |