Many #Polynesians today regard #ATUA / #AKUA as a sole deity. According to Reverend George Pratt's 1893 Samoan Dictionary:
Atua, s. Malay, Tuan. 1. a god. Synonymous with: Aitu. Logologo se atua fai fili. 2. God. (p. 80)
Aitu, s. 1. a spirit. 2. A god. Synonymous with: Atua. Pe ʻese le aitu, ʻese le Moemu?
3. A feast in honour of a god. (p. 58)
Atualagi, s. the chief's word for aitu. (p. 80)
This definition is supported by and given more context in Na Puke Wehewehe 'Olelo Hawai'i online dictionary:
akua 1. vs. God, goddess, spirit, ghost, devil, image, idol, corpse; divine, supernatural, godly. Akua might mate with humans and give birth to normal humans, moʻo, or kupua (Na_na_ 23). Children of Ka-mehameha by Ke-opu-o-lani were sometimes referred to as akua because of their high rank. Kauā, or outcasts, were sometimes called akua because they were despised as ghosts. Kona akua, his god. Akua nō kona ʻike, his knowledge is indeed divine. ʻAi akua, to have a prodigious appetite, as though possessed of gods [as youthful heroes in legends]. Nāna nō i hāʻawi i ke akua, through her given to the god [death by sorcery, cursed]. hoʻā.kua To deify, make a god of; godlike, supernatural, extraordinary, divine. Cf. hoa kua. Hoʻākua nohoʻi kāna hana, his deeds are marvelous. Hoʻākua ke kai, a dangerous sea (PPNʻatua.) 2. (Cap.) n. God (Christian). 3. n. “It” in a game of tag or hide-and-seek. 4. (Cap.) Name of the 14th night of the full moon. (PEP ʻAtua.)
I propose #ATUA / #AKUA was a mountain-top ASSEMBLY of the gods and the word reinforces the plural reading of the Hebrew “#ELOHIM”. Rather than one god, the gods are of one mind, one assembly and they were members of one family--one aiga, one 'aina.
You may note that the word AITU and ATUA were once used synonymously in Sāmoa. This has gone out of fashion as Christian Sāmoans now almost exclusively use ATUA and, very seldomly, TAGALOA. At first glance this seems to undermine a claim of parallels between Polynesian languages and the phonetic transliteration rules suggested here, but I will demonstrate later how the Egyptian is only further corroborated by the discrepancy in transliteration of [Dw] into AITU and ATUA.
Both ancient #Egyptian and #Sumerian civilizations use terminology for “mountain” that sounds identical to the Polynesian word for God.
In Sumerian:
E.KUR / 𒂍𒆳
𒂍 = /E/ and /A/ and means “House” or “temple” (house for gods)
𒆳 = /KUR/ and /TUR/ means “mountain”
Altogether—“mountain house”. E.KUR was a temple complex structure at the heart of the city of #Nippur / #Nibiru, which sits today in #Nuffar, #Iraq.
Essentially that’s #OLYMPUS. In this case, Olympus as well appears to be a corruption of, or concatenation of the Greek phrases:
‘Oρεινό φρούριο μας = ‘Ourāno phrourio mas = “our mountain fortress”
ορεινή μα φρούπός = ‘Ourāni ma phroupos = “mountainous and wild”
‘ορεμ κήπος = 'orem kipos = "hot spring garden"
ορεμήπος = oremipos = "mountain garden"
This is very reminiscent of a paradisiacal garden in heaven. Mt. Olympus, as the home of the gods, must have been a cognate of the Garden of Eden (𒀀𒇉𒂔 / ᴵᴰEDIN) story. The Sumerian reading of E.KUR agrees with the garden reading as surviving literature that describes the temple / home of the Sumerian gods as a lush garden at the heart of a fortified citadel. And at the heart of this garden, a tree with special properties.
The root of #Uranus’s name appears to be tied to the word “mountain”, and Olympus must take its name from him. Uranus is the later Greek rendition of ANU, Sumerian Titan, god of heaven and father of the Olympian generation of gods. So, does a mountain theme work with the name of Anu?
Actually, yes, if the name is 'Ouranus with the onset glottal stop:
' = k
Which gives us: KOUR-AN-Ū-S
Does cuneiform confirm a majestic “universal ruler” theme?
KOUR = KUR = 𒆳 = mountain
AN = AN = 𒀭 = heaven
U = 𒌋 = world
UŠ = US = 𒍑 = man
𒆳𒀭𒌋𒍑 = "(Ruler?) over men of the world, (from?) the mountain of heaven"
Seems that it does.
In Sumerian mythology the gods gathered in E.KUR over which #Enlil, son of #Anu presided. Enlil was the "Lord of the Wind". His elder brother Enki was the "Lord of Earth and the Abyss."
Hebrew for “Mount” sounds much like KUR as with הר (Kh-Re). It also is pronounced HALE much like the Hawaiian word for “house”, which in Sāmoan is FALE. In Egyptian it is transliterated as [pr]:
𓉐 𓀀𓁐
𓏤 𓏥 = [pr] = “house” {O1 Z1 A1 B1
𓉐 = O1 = [pr] = “house”
𓏤 = Z1 = determiner for standalone ideograms
𓀀 = A1 = man
𓁐 = B1 = woman
𓏥 = Z2 = determiner for sacred, tapū, taboo, holy things, and standalone ideograms
It would seem that the transliteration for Egyptian to Sāmoan to Hawaiian follows the patterns of:
/P/ = /F/ = /H/
/R/ = /L/
This sheds some light on the Tolufale, or “three houses” origin story for the name of one of high chief Pili-ka-’au’au’s sons, a founder of one of the great names from the early legendary period of Upolu, Sāmoa.
As part of the Hebrew word הרמה (KhA-Le-Ma-Ha) for “highland” it suggests a connection between deity and God as מה (MAHA) could mean “of a god” or “of God” (HA). So, KhA-Le-Ma = “House Of a God”. And that sounds like #KALAMA, an ancient Hawaiian Ali’i name, which could mean “The Light”, “The Lamp”, “The Torch”.
The theme of this study sounds every bit like a collection of references to Prometheus the Lightbringer.
lama, n.
1. All endemic kinds of ebony (Diospyros, synonym Maba), hardwood trees with small flowers and fruits. (Neal 674.) Also ēlama. (PNP lama.)
2. Torch, light, lamp. Lama wood was used in medicine and placed in hula altars because its name suggested enlightenment; huts were built of lama wood in a single day during daylight (lama) hours, and the sick were placed inside them for curing. (PPN rama.)
3. Also rama Rum; any intoxicating drink. Eng.He kanaka inu lama, a person fond of drinking; a drinker or heavy drinker..
In Egyptian hieroglyphs of the Middle Egyptian period the word 𓈋𓅱𓊌 for "mountain" is transliterated as [Dw] {#Gardiner list numbers: N26 G43 O39} (Dickson, p. 132).
𓈋 = [Dw] = a biliteral grapheme of two hills that stands for both the phonetic sound and definition of “mountain”. (p. 489)
𓅱 = [w]/[u] = a suffix that acts as a plural marker for nouns (p. 472)
𓊌 = a determiner for things made of stone (p. 497)
Written Middle Egyptian as with Hebrew generally only records the consonants, so vowels between must be gleaned from context in order to differentiate homonyms. Onset vowels may be assumed, so /A/ appended to the start of [Dw] is natural.
𓈋𓅱𓊌 = (a)-D-ua
But if you really really need to see a prefix that contains an /a/ let’s try adding the glyphs for “House”:
𓂝 = A (ayin) = {D36}
𓏏 = T = {X1}
So:
𓂝
𓏏 𓈋𓅱𓊌 = AT-D-UA = “house (of the) mountain”
ADUA / ATDUA is close enough in sound that it can be safely assumed it shares the same etymology not only with Sumerian but also the Polynesian variants like Sāmoan ATUA and Hawaiian AKUA. Most importantly it means the same thing regardless of a slight difference in oral articulation.
Even today in Hawaiian and Sāmoan the words #KUA and #TUA are associated with the ridge atop mountain ranges and metaphorically linked to the large lower back bone of the spine as with the great and ancient name #KUAMOO.
Sāmoan speakers touch on the subject of AITU cautiously as the word has demonic associations. In Sāmoan culture the phenomenon of erratic, violent, or nonsequitur behavior in members of a community sometimes comes under suspicion of demonic possession by a being known as an AITU. These beings are regarded as supernatural, capricious and sometimes malevolent as in times past when cannibalism plagued Polynesia, cannibal chiefs were regarded as being under the influence of AITU; as having “two natures”.
On that note, a word about a second definition of Egyptian [Dw]:
The hieroglyph for [Dw] is a literal representation of two hills. Between them, a valley, perhaps a malae o vevesi or “field of battle.” As well as meaning “evil”, it appears there is a sense of cross-purposes, of duality and it leads me to wonder whether ATUA does not also share a common root as the word “duality” itself in the morpheme dua-. Very much in line with this thinking is the reading of [At Dw] as the following string of hieroglyphs :
𓂝 𓈋 𓏏 𓏴 𓅪
[At] = “House” [Dw] = “evil”
𓏴 = “Destroy” (achdjj), “break”, “divide” (wpj), “over load” (djAj), “cross”, “meet”
𓅪 = determiner for various words related to the idea of ”small” or “bad”
Perhaps these aitu were the specialized practitioners of Sāmoan “black magic” and the crafts of strategic warfare, assassination, thievery (a prized skill), poisons, and other typically negative professions that involved expertise in the darker human impulses: a Kahuna of darkness in contrast to a Kahuna of light, agriculture, architecture or healing.
An aitu of Upolu named Gegē (Craig 42, 347) came from the area of Falealili, whose namesake alluded to the arrival of a Fijian chieftain named Lili and his establishment along the southeastern shoreline of the Atua District. Gegē and his sons are said to have established themselves there in Falealili in or near that “evil house”. Gegē was a renowned aitu of warfare and credited with the destruction of a party of demonic aitu from Savai’i who sought to capture and eat him but were thwarted by his seemingly inexhaustible trove of tactics and clever ruses. In contemporary literary terms he was very much like a popular Sith Lord with a spark of light, a troubled light bearer, a Promethean.
While not a commonplace phenomenon, aitu possession are dealt with in an underwhelmingly business-as-usual and pragmatic manner. Bravely Samoans are comfortable enough in their spiritual faiths that such evil influences are within the compass of human abilities to manage, contrary to the dramatically chilling representation of spiritual possession by Hollywood. Unlike the exorcisms of the silver screen, Sāmoan communities never have a shortage of holy men to wage spiritual warfare for it seems every family has its own church and villages teem with fale-sā, or “holy houses”.
As we are now on the subject of spirits and gods, it is a good time to search for and take stock of any further connections to the words ATUA and AKUA, namely with AUMATUA and 'AUMĀKUA, regarded as ancestral spirits of particular family members who have not entirely left the land of the living, instead but who may be invoked to encourage success in a particular endeavor.
ʻau.makua 1. nvt. Family or personal gods, deified ancestors who might assume the shape of sharks (all islands except Kauaʻi), owls (as at Mānoa, O'ahu and Kaʻū and Puna, Hawaiʻi), hawks (Hawaiʻi), ʻelepaio, ʻiwi, mudhens, octopuses, eels, mice, rats, dogs, caterpillars, rocks, cowries, clouds, or plants. A symbiotic relationship existed; mortals did not harm or eat ʻaumākua (they fed sharks), and ʻaumākua warned and reprimanded mortals in dreams, visions, and calls. (Beckwith, 1970, pp. 124–43, 559; Nānā 38.) Fig.., a trustworthy person. (Probably lit.., ʻau 4, group, + makua, parent.) See pulapula 2. hō.ʻau.makua To acquire or contact ʻaumākua.
2. vt. To offer grace to ʻaumākua before eating; to bless in the name of ʻaumākua. ʻAuhea ʻoe, ē ke kanaka o ke akua, eia kā kāua wahi ʻai, ua loaʻa maila mai ka pō mai ka pō mai; no laila nāu e ʻaumakua mai i ka ʻai a kāua (prayer), hearken, O man who serves the god, here is food for you [lit.., our food], received from the night, so bless our food in the name of the ʻaumakua.
In the Samoan language, AU means:
"good", "to reach", "to carry away, as the stones of a wall" (Pratt, 59).
'AU means:
"to side with, to be of the same party, in disputes or quarrels", "a troop of warriors", "the stalk of a plant", "a handle", "a bunch of bananas"; "to send" (Pratt, 59).
MATUA means:
"parent", "elder", "mature", "full-grown", "fit to pluck or dig up", "to frequent", "to make a home of", "very", "altogether", "quite" and serves a sentence as "to mark the superlative degree" of a preceding root word (Pratt, 218).
'AUMAKUA / 'AUMATUA, then is a multi-layered, nuanced word that means variously (all of which convey the traditional sense of what 'AUMAKUA means) "to send the elders (to work for you / to fight for you / to advocate for you)", "a bunch of bananas that are fit for harvest", "to carry a bunch of bananas by the stem", "to side with the elders" and "to have the elders side with you in times of war or famine".
So, for hieroglyphs we are looking for morphemes that are semantically related to:
an agent or go-between that serves man and gods
who carries out the will of the gods
who advocates for the will of their family
in the mountain house / mountain garden
For that purpose, I humbly ask you to consider the following hieroglyphs:
Now let's assemble them:
𓂝 𓂝 𓂬 𓂝
𓋮 𓍯 𓄿 𓂡 𓅓 𓏏 𓈋𓅱𓊌 = [a][awA][m][at][Dw][ua]
Loosely this means:
"interpreter (of the gods' will) who looks after/carries out (affairs) (for) House (of the) Mountain”
I think we may have just pinpointed the locality of our deep ancestors.
The overall essence of 'AUMAKUA is reminiscent of the most widely recognized 'aumakua of them all:
"Moses answered the people, 'Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.'" (Exodus 14:13-14:14)
Immediately after this the Lord commands Israel to become a Sea People:
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.'" (Exodus 14:15)
It is worth noting here that the name Moses is universally recognized. What is overlooked is that this was a name of Moses the fully matured adult man given him by the wife of Pharaoh once he attained adulthood and returned to Egypt. It is more likely an Egyptian word or title transliterated as [msA] akin to the Sumerian word MESH. It means "to bring", "to present to", "to bring away booty", "to extend one's hand", and "to take aim".
Recall that Moses's deeds connected him to serpent symbology on multiple occasions. First, in Egypt:
"When Pharaoh says to you, 'Perform a miracle,' then say to Aaron, 'Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,' and it will become a snake." So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake." (Exodus 7:9-7:10)
Again,we later encounter Moses associated with a snake, this time in a healing capacity, when he raises up the Nehushtan, a bronze serpent on a pole in order to relieve the afflicted Israelites who were punished for a transgression of ingratitude and stubbornness:
"Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, 'We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.' So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived." (Numbers 21:6-21:9).
We should therefore check in with the Sumerian on the phonetics of the name of Moses and see if it corroborates the Egyptian reading:
𒈳 MUSH x A (MUŠ x A) = "son (or follower) of the snake" (as with [msW]
𒈲 = MUSH (MUŠ) = "snake"
𒀀 = A = "son", "water"
We know that Moses uses a serpent staff to command the Israelites across the sea. This sufficiently satisfies the affiliation with water. Moses frequent involvement with the serpent in the capacity as miracle worker and deliverer (one who carries a people), and leader of a troop of followers who belonged to a dissatisfied and disgruntled labor class probably taken into captivity as prizes of war. These laborers possibly included a mix of prisoners of war comprised of infantrymen and charioteers defeated in ground campaigns and sailors defeated at sea. Could these laborers be the captives taken by Ramses III during the campaign in which he put down the infamous Sea Peoples?
Inscribed on the walls and stelae of the mortuary complex is the history of his exploits. Highlighted is his campaign of cataclysmic naval and land engagements against the Sea Peoples and their allies who, according to inscriptions in the Ramesseum, were said to have laid waste to all the eastern Mediterranean from Turkey to Canaan. Ramses acknowledges the significance of this threat from the fearsome Sea Peoples, with an inscription that reads:
"They desolated its people and its land was like that which has never come into being."
In approximately 1175 B.C.E. at The Battle of Djahy (Lebanon), Ramses III crushed a land incursion of allies of the emboldened Sea Peoples who projected infantry power inland and followed up by destroying their fleets at The Battle of the Delta. In the Medinet Habu Mortuary Temple of Ramses III an inscription is written of the Sea People:
"Those who reached my boundary, their seed is not; their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever... As for the Nine Bows, I have taken away their land and their boundaries; they are added to mine. Their chiefs and their people (come) to me with praise. I carried out the plans of the All-Lord, the august, divine father, lord of the gods."
From this we may ascertain that the various readings of [msA] as an expedition of soldiers and workmen customarily deployed at the bidding of pharaoh is a description of the defeated but marginally tamed loose confederation of tribes collectively termed "Israelites"--sailors, and soldiers from a well-disciplined fighting force that decimated the civilized world of this age, crushing the Hittites and sweeping down through the Levant into Canaan riding a wave of destruction known as "The Bronze Age Collapse". These people would be well-disciplined enough to maintain cohesion under a firm and wise leader. The biblical account of the Exodus and the deeds and conduct of the Israelites fulfills all the varying attributes of [msA]--a vanguard conscripted by pharaoh and one not likely well-loved by its overseers.
Perhaps the Israelites twelve tribes were comprised of a rag-tag band of brigands, mercenaries, grizzled war veterans, seamen, and disgruntled priests loyal to Akhenaten's Aten-worship on the move following an initiate of the highest order of the mysteries of the moon god of Sinai. Elsewhere in my blogs I have drawn the conclusion that the god atop Mt. Sinai was the Sumerian moon god Nanna, also known as Sin. The name of this moon god who helped the Israelites by robbing Egypt like a thief in the night, absconding with pharaoh's laborers and heaps of Egyptian treasure was non other than #YHWH.
𓇋 𓂝 𓎛 𓇹 𓂝 𓍯 𓄿 𓀜 {M17 D36 V28 N11 D36 V4 G1 A24}
"MOON GOD" - IAH
𓇋 = M17 = Y
𓂝 = D36 = Ayin
𓎛 = V28 = biliteral of /hh/ and "eternity"
𓇹 = N11 = determiner for "moon"; ideogram for /i'h/, 'moon'; items of the 'month'; agricultural cues
"ROBBER" - WACHJ
𓍯 = V4 = wꜣ (ua) = "lasso", "cord"
𓄿 = G1 = a = "vulture", "3"
𓀜 = A24 = "to hit" or "strike" (achwj); power, strength, teach lesson, or instruct (sbA); call (njs); be happy (achaj)
YAH-WACHJ = YHWH = "The Moon God who is a Robber (of Egypt)"
Samoan YHWH:
'ia = marker of subjunctive (expressing a wish to do something)
a'afia = to participate in causing trouble
va'a = a priest of an aitu
Yahweh's name in Samoan means literally: "He that wanted to collude with his priest for the purpose of causing trouble"
Well, that says it all doesn't it?
So, why this focus on Moses and Yahweh in discussion of ATUA and 'AUMAKUA?
This short comparative list of really close parallels in vocabulary may explain how and why Polynesians appear to have an incredible depth of cultural and linguistic similarities to so many of the ancient civilizations of Mediterranean and Mesopotamian world and evident links to the Meso-American and North American Indians. Even the name, or title, of "Moses" has cognates in Polynesia. #Muasau of Samoa, for example, is regarded as an ancient family line whose name means "first to come", or "vanguard". The Hopi deliverer Maasau'u (#Maasaw) is spoken of as "the first to come" to America and prepare the way for the early people who would eventually become the Hopi.
One thing is crystal clear: the Polynesian words ATUA and AITU are etymologically linked both to each other and the two readings of the Egyptian hieroglyph for [Dw], read as both “mountain” and “misfortune”.
It really seems like these were the #Anunnaki everyone is talking about, and not the Zechariah Sitchin version of them. Sorry, but God is plural. Elohim is not a “royal we”-ism. Elohim is a plural word and it agrees with the ancient traditions of God and “the sons of God”.
In His Royal Hawaiian Majesty King David Kalakaua's book "The Legends and Myths of Hawai'i" he asserts that:
"we trace the strictly Polynesian tribes to an Aryan beginning, somewhere in Asia Minor or Arabia. There, in the remote past, it is assumed, they were brought in close contact with early Cushite and Chaldeo-Arabian civilizations. Subsequently drifting into India, they to some extent amalgamated with the Dravidian races, and following the channels of the great Chaldean commerce of that period, at length found a home in the Asiatic archipelago from Sumatra to Luzon and Timor." (p. 19)
Later, the king of Hawaii in touching on the nature of Hawaiian gods and religion writes:
"...the Hawaiian theogony...is an independent and perhaps original version of a series of creation legends common in the remote past to the Cushite, Semite and Aryan tribes, and was handed down quite as accurately as the Jewish version before it became fixed in written characters. In fact, in some respects the Hawaiian seems to be more complete than the Jewish version." (p. 35)
I don’t know what the value of this information is for you all, but I for one feel a load of pressure taken off my back with respect to the eternal debate about polytheistic readings of the nature of God and monotheism. It doesn’t matter. I think the real criticism directed at mankind through religious literature particularly via monotheistic faiths is the practice of bowing down to graven images—idolatry.
So...
Back to #MaunaKea... and #TMT. Mountains are really important to Polynesian people. They are the abodes of the gods, of the spirits of the gods, or of the memory of the gods. If you go there, tread softly and with reverence for it is holy ground and the gods might take offense. If you build anything there, build a temple and maybe consider dedicating it to the Akua (plural).
References:
Beckwith, Martha Warren. "Hawaiian Mythology". University of Hawaii Press, 1970.
Beckwith, Marth Warren. "Hawaiian Mythology". University of Hawaii Press, 1976.
Craig, Robert D. “Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology“. Greenwood Press, 1934.
Dickson, Paul. "Dictionary of Middle Egyptian in Gardiner Classification Order". Dickson, 2006.
Hogan, Ed, Peter, & Tara. "Sumerian Cuneiform English Dictionary". MUG.SAR Dictionary, 12013 CT.
Kalakaua, HRHM David. "The Legends and Myths of Hawai'i, The Fables an Folk-lore of a Strange People". Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888.
Krämer, Dr. Augustin. “The Samoa Islands”. Pasifika Press, 1902.
Pratt, Reverend George. "A Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language, with English and Samoan vocabulary", 3rd Edition. London Missionary Society, 1893.
Na Puke Wehewehe 'Olelo Hawai'i. Ulukau Hawaiian Electronic Library. http://wehewehe.org/ (accessed 21 July 2019).
Images:
"Ruins from a temple in Naffur.jpg" - Jasmine N. Walthall, U.S. Army - http://www.defenselink.mil;http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53475; VIRIN:110309-A-2934W-271 created 12 March 2009 and posted to Public Domain. Image used under Creative Commons.
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