Sola Rey

Sun worshipping cultures & an image of an Ankh found in South Africa?

The Holy of Holies the Egyptian Ankh.

This is a rare and unique Osiride pillar statue of pharaoh Senusret I of the Middle Kingdom. Made out of limestone, its catalogue number is Luxor J174. It is currently located in the Luxor Museum.

Here is a beautiful Egyptian ankh carved in the radiating circle.

The Makalanga are “the children of the sun” and if you look at the erosion and the cracks that formed through these carvings, It’s very very hard rock you realize that this is not something was craft 2000, 5000 years ago, but a lot longer than that.

The Sun worship in cultures of southern Africa, which are not supposed to be there.

-Michael Tellinger

What is the Egyptian Ankh? 

The origin of the symbol remains a mystery to Egyptologists, and no single hypothesis has been widely accepted.

Nubian Museum in Africa

The ankh also known as breath of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata (Latin meaning “cross with a handle”), was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read “life”, a triliteral sign for the consonants AyinNunHet.

The character represents the concept of life, which is the general meaning of the symbol. The Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest. The ankh appears in hand or in proximity of almost every deity in the Egyptian pantheon (including Pharaohs). Thus it is fairly and widely understood as a symbol of early religious pluralism: all sects believed in a common story of eternal life, and this is the literal meaning of the symbol. This rationale contributed to the adoption of the ankh by New Age mysticism in the 1960s.

The ankh symbol was so prevalent that it has been found in digs as far as Mesopotamia and Persia, and even on the seal of the biblical king Hezekiah.

Nubian Queen Jewelry from Sudan, Africa

The ankh appears frequently in Egyptian tomb paintings and other art, often at the fingertips of a god or goddess in images that represent the deities of the afterlife conferring the gift of life on the dead person’s mummy; this is thought to symbolize the act of conception. Additionally, an ankh was often carried by Egyptians as an amulet, either alone, or in connection with two other hieroglyphs that mean “strength” and “health” (see explication of djed and was, above). Mirrors of beaten metal were also often made in the shape of an ankh, either for decorative reasons or to symbolize a perceived view into another world.

A symbol similar to the ankh appears frequently in Minoan and Mycenaean sites. This is a combination of the sacral knot (symbol of holiness) with the double-edged axe (symbol of matriarchy) but it can be better compared with the Egyptian tyet which is similar. This symbol can be recognized on the two famous figurines of the chthonian Snake Goddess discovered in the palace of Knossos. Both snake goddesses have a knot with a projecting loop cord between their breasts. In the Linear B (Mycenean Greek) script, ankh is the phonetic sign za.

Jewelry from the tomb of Queen Amanishakheto in Meroë 

The ankh also appeared frequently in coins from ancient Cyprus and Asia Minor (particularly the city of Mallus in Cilicia). In some cases, especially with the early coinage of King Euelthon of Salamis, the letter ku, from the Cypriot syllabary, appeared within the circle ankh, representing Ku (prion) (Cypriots). To this day, the ankh is also used to represent the planet Venus (the namesake of which, the goddess Venus or Aphrodite, was chiefly worshiped on the island) and the metal copper (the heavy mining of which gave Cyprus its name).

Coptic Christians preserved the shape of the ankh by sometimes representing the Christian cross with a circle in place of the upper bar. This is known as the Coptic ankh or crux ansata.

Images of the ankh were also found in Nubia, Sudan, Africa.

 

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