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Writer's pictureIosua Ioane Fānene

Egyptian root of Tupua / Kupua / Tupuga / Kupuna

Updated: Jul 16, 2019

#TUPUA / #KUPUA (Pratt, 329) is a word used for the most ancient of ancestors and gods—the Elder race of men and gods according to #Sāmoan / #Hawaiian traditions. They are the equivalent of Titans and regarded as among the most powerful of supernatural beings.


#Tupua is an obvious corruption of ANCIENT #EGYPTIAN TEPĀ / TEPU-ĀU / TEP-ĀU. Which means “ancestors, those who lived long ago” (#Budge, 578).


𓁶 𓏺

𓂝 𓀼 𓏪 = tep-āu = /tp/ + /ua/ + separator + /det. for noble/ + /det. for sacred/


𓁶 𓂝

𓏺 𓊪 𓅱 𓏪 𓏺 𓅱 𓀀 = tepu-āu = /tp/ + separator + /p/ + /āu/ + /u/ + /det. for sacred/ + separator + /u/ + /det. for noble/


𓁶 𓂝

𓊪 𓅱𓀀 𓏼 = tepu-ā = /tp/ + /p/ + /āu/ + /u/ + /det. for noble/ + /det. for sacred/


Key:

𓁶 - D1 - tp / “Head”

𓂝 - D36 - a / ayin

𓊪 - Q3 - p, t, h - stool; stool made out of reeds; mat under stool, support

𓏺 - Z15 - “1” - abundance

𓏪 - Z3 - “3” - Dangerous to write / kapu

𓀼 - A51 - noble on chair with flagellum - schpsi (“to be of noble blood”), entrepreneur of noble blood, schpsi (“undertake a task”), “one who does a thing”

𓅱 - G43 - “quail chick”, w, Id. w; 1. Unil. w, or u;

2. Either "quail chick" or equivalent coil (hieroglyph), Gardiner no. Z7, used as the Plural at word endings; 3. (see also: Plural)

𓀀 - A1 - seated man - I (Paeu), male, man, typical masculine role, son, courtier

𓏼 - Z15B - “3”

“Ancestors, those who lived in olden time”


[ALSO, see attached images.]


Sāmoan seems phonetically much nearer to the Egyptian than Hawaiian is. This circumstance lends credence to the tradition that Manu’a was at one time THE central hub of #Polynesia. It is likely that Hawaiian #royalty were once an extension of Sāmoan royalty by virtue of colonization and subsequent reassertion of Ali’i bloodlines through #Pili and #Paao (#Westerveldt, 65). This gives context to the claim by his Hawaiian Royal Majesty King David #Kalākaua that Hawaiian kings sometimes sought Sāmoan chiefs and chiefesses (19-20) as brides in order to maintain or reinforce the mana in the blood of their heirs.


Extending this origin further, #Tregear makes out the invaluable point that the ancient Egyptian civilization bears a stronger resemblance to Asiatic civilizations than to African:

“...I include the Egyptians among the Asiatic peoples, relying upon the statements of learned authors that the Egyptians were not Africans, but an Asiatic immigration into Africa.” (182)

One point of linguistic and literary intersection #Tregear highlights is one that I, too, noticed when I was still a young man owing to the conspicuous similarities between Egyptian Rā and Sāmoan Lā:

“It has been a widely remarked fact that the Egyptian Ra, the sun, is the same word as the Polynesian Ra, the sun. In fact, more prominence has been given to it than is desirable, since it is only a single coincidence, but, if it is backed up by a hundred others, it becomes an important factor in argument.” (182)

So, how about that #pyramid at #Pulemelei on Savai’i, eh?...(Wallin, 81-84)


Even carbon-dated to 150 B.C.E. ample room exists to argue a common origin between the Egyptian and Polynesian peoples. I would dare to venture that this only scratches the surface of how extensive this proto-civilization actually was and that the tentacles of the octopus, the symbolic Fe’e (quite possibly the Fay folk and Faerie) reached deep into the Americas, informing Olmec, Mayan, Inca, Aztec and beyond. On my quest to learn more about dragons and serpents, moon, fire, earth, air and water deities like Enki/Eā, YHWH, Enlil, Sina/Hina, Pili and so on, I have discovered traces of shared vocabulary among the Dakota, Hopi, Navajo, Pipil, and other tribes of the Americas. Most telling is the presence of the word Sāmoa in a variety of configurations in all these languages, which emphasize a variety of readily recognizable attributes associated with Sāmoa.


But that is a topic for future posts.

 

References

  1. Budge, Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis. An Egyptian Reading Book for Beginners. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1896.

  2. Kalākaua, HRHM David. The Legends & Myths of Hawai’i. Charles L. Webster, & Co., 1887.

  3. Pratt, Rev. George. A Grammar and Dictionary of the Sāmoan Language, With English and Sāmoan Vocabulary. R. McMillan, 1893.

  4. Tregear, Edward. Asiatic Gods in the Pacific. The Journal of the Polynesian Society. Volume 2. Number 3. September 1893.

  5. Wallin, Helene Martinsson; Clark, Geoffrey; Wallin, Paul. Archaeological Investigations at the Pulemelei Mound. Rapa Nui Journal. Issue 17, Volume 2. October, 2003.

  6. Westerveldt, William Drake. Hawaiian Historical Legends. Fleming H. Revell, Co., 1923.




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