Universal Truths Final Revision

Universal Truths: Ancient… 1

UNIVERSAL TRUTHS: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY…

Universal Truths: Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony

&African and Western

MetaphysicsBy:

Natisha JordanProfessor Maybee

AAS-350March 23, 2013Final Revision:

November 18, 2013


Abstract

This paper will explore Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony as the foundation for traditional African

philosophy, Western philosophy and Christian Doctrine. During the semester, while being

introduced to different opinions on the subject of African Philosophy and in particular, concepts

in metaphysics, I identified an under-lying problem lies at the heart of each - using one ideology

(western philosophy/metaphysics) to judge the validity of another (traditional African

philosophy/metaphysics) when both have a common ancestor in Ancient Egyptian cosmogony.

This paper will be introducing and exploring concepts of Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony,

establishing them as the proto-types for metaphysical of traditional African philosophy, Western

philosophy and Christian Doctrine, proving they are an extension of the Ancient Knowledge.


Universal Truths:

Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony & African and Western Metaphysics

During my research, I came across an interesting story that echoed my reasons for writing

this paper. The following story illustrates what I find to be a problem in discussions about

metaphysics, mainly, traditional African metaphysics:

In 1911, Italian Catholic priests put before a group of Acholi elders the question

“Who created you?” and because the Luo language does not have an independent

concept of create or creation, the question was rendered to mean “Who molded

you?” But this was still meaningless, because human beings are born of their

mothers. The elders told the visitors that they did not know. But we are told that

this reply was unsatisfactory, and the missionaries insisted that a satisfactory

answer must be given. One of the elders remembered that, although a person may

be born normally, when he is afflicted with tuberculosis of the spine, then he loses

his normal figure, he gets "molded". So he said "Rubanga is the one who moulds

people." This is the name of the hostile spirit which the Acholi believe causes the

hunch or hump back. And instead of exorcising the hostile spirits and sending

them among pigs, the representatives of Jesus Christ began to preach that

Rubanga was the Holy Father who created the Acholi (Wiredu: 37-38).

A problem that I have encountered while learning about traditional African metaphysics –

philosophy in general- is that it is always discussed from a western point of view.

Defining Metaphysics

Metaphysics – Why are we here? What is our reason for being? How do we explain

everything that exists around us? When I think about defining metaphysics, these are the kind of

questions that come to mind. One thing I wanted to do for this paper was provide a concrete,

universally accepted definition of what exactly metaphysics is. Surprisingly, this was hard to do

– the reason being, there is no one accepted definition for metaphysics. No matter where I looked

– scholarly or more mainstream publications, no one could provide a definition that was concrete

or universally applicable. The West defines metaphysics in terms of a collection of books written


by Aristotle (Metaphysics of Aristotle) who defines the so-called four branches of metaphysics as

(1) first philosophy, (2) first science, (3) wisdom and (4) theology (www.stanford.edu). Of

course, Aristotle himself never used the term metaphysics – later western philosophers would

later use his works to define metaphysics as the study of all things outside of the physical world.

To further compound my problem, when trying to define metaphysics in terms of so-

called traditional African philosophical thought, again, I ran into the problem of there not being

one accepted defining term. Western philosophy and metaphysics applies to all western men and

their relation to the world around them. The men of the West regardless of geographic location,

share more a less a common culture, a common worldview. In African relation to Africa, we see

much debate over there even being African philosophy or metaphysics? On the continent of

Africa, there are many cultures, each with its own unique culture-specific philosophy. This gives

those supporting the idea there is such a thing as African philosophy and metaphysics in the face

of Western concepts a hard time. So, instead they must as Wiredu suggests argue that “most

metaphysical discourses on the continent have certain common themes” (164). This means that

while there are and can be distinct differences among the many culture-specific philosophical

and metaphysical concepts within Africa, there is a commonality shared. It then becomes a

question of whether these common themes are strong enough to stand alongside Western

concepts as equals. My belief is they do stand as equals, regardless of how different they are

from their western counterparts. They stand as equals because they share a common ancestor in

terms of philosophical and metaphysical concept (in particular). It is my argument that the

metaphysical concepts of both Western and so-called traditional African metaphysics derive

from Ancient Egyptian cosmogony.

God and Creation

http://www.stanford.edu/


Western Metaphysics

When examining the concepts of God and creationism in Western metaphysics, we are

introduced to the concept ex nihilo – creation out of nothingness. In Western metaphysics, God

created the world out of nothing. Though he created the world, God is outside of the world, time

and creation. Because of this, God does make ad hoc interventions in the world- God is not a part

of the world. This also speaks to the Christian doctrine that God created the universe and all of

reality “out of nothing” – nothing existed but God. A consequence of the doctrine of ex nihilo

creation is that God is not required to conform to any of the principles of justice, peace, equality,

love, reason or logic, God is outside of the world and outside of the principles of man. If all

existence is a creation of God, then so is everything else. This means God is not required to act

or intervene on our behalf; explaining God’s ad hoc interventions – God acts when God chooses

to, not because God has to.

Traditional African Metaphysics

In his essay entitled On Decolonizing African Religions, when examining the Akan's

concept of God, Wiredu explains that “…it seems clear that the Akan Supreme Being is thought

of as a cosmic architect rather than a creator out of nothing (22). The Akan view God as not

outside of the world but of the world and in everything in and of the world. This statement is also

expressed in Teffo and Roux’s Themes in African Metaphysics which takes a look at universal

themes that can be found within the various present day African cultures (161). They also look to

Wiredu and his assessment of Akan metaphysics where they quote him as saying, “God is seen

as creator of the world but, because God is not outside the world, this cannot mean that he

created the world out of nothing” (166). In his essay, Wiredu quotes the following Akan

cosmological drum text:


Odomankoma

He created the thing

‘Hewer out’ Creator

He created the thing

What did he create?

He created Order

He created Knowledge

He created Death

And its quintessence (Danquah 1968:70).

This cosmological drum text clearly illustrates the concept of God is of the world. In order to

create anything, something has to be there, something had to take place first. We do not know

what it is, but we know that it was there and that it happened. This leads to the Akan belief that

God does not make ad hoc interventions in the world – because God is of this world. It is in

God’s interest to intervene, maintain balance, harmony in the world. This is in stark contrast to

Western metaphysics concept of ex nihilo.

In both Western and Akan traditional metaphysics the concept of God and creationism are

radically different from each other, but, are not unheard of. Both concepts have their foundation

in ancient Egyptian cosmogony as I will now discuss.

The Concept of Nun in Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony

When looking at ancient Egyptian metaphysical concepts we find a long established

concept of the Supreme Being as a cosmic architect in opposition to God as ex nihilo. According

to author Innocent C. Onyewuenyi’s The African Origins of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in

Afrocentrism, “the ancient Egyptians used three different systems of symbolism to express the

reality of creation” (178). These systems were the Hermopolitan, Heliopolitan and Memphite

(Memphite Theology) Systems. This is important to note in regard to so-called traditional

African metaphysics today, the fact that there are many cultural differences within the continent


that prevent a unified definition of African metaphysics. At the basis of the three systems of

ancient Egyptian cosmogony was the concept of Nun, the primordial abyss –the region out of

which life first came (Onyewuenyi 2005). The ancient Egyptians regarded Nun as the starting

point of life and spoke to their understanding of the importance of the Nile and water as the most

essential element (life).

The ancient Egyptians also believed that everything had a beginning, even the Gods and

the Supreme Being. As Onyewuenyi states, “the universe had to have a beginning, which means

that nothing existed before it” (179). This directly correlates with the Akan’s concept of God

being of the world. The following pyramid text illustrates what the Egyptians describe as the

“time” before creation:

The sky had not yet come into being

The earth had not yet come into being

Mankind had not yet come into being

The god had not yet been born

Death had not yet come into being (178).

If the above text sounds familiar, it does. This here is the prototype for the Akan cosmological

drum text and various other present day African cultures concept of God as Supreme Being and

cosmic architect. According to Onyewuenyi, the above pyramid text states the Egyptian belief

that the “identifiable things or events as we know them in creation had not yet come into

existence. The creator-god had not yet commenced his creative work. And creation was going to

start from something” (179). It is easy to see how the concept of a Supreme Being acting as an

architect, in relation to the world, not outside of it, have survived in traditional Akan

metaphysics. Regardless of the particulars, they share a common theme in explaining their

understanding of God and creation.


Christian Doctrine of God in Western Metaphysics

When Constantine defeated Emperor Licinius in 323 AD he ended the persecutions

against the Christian church. Shortly afterwards Christians faced a trouble from within: the Arian

controversy began and threatened to divide the church. The problem began in Alexandria, it

started as a debate between the bishop Alexander and the presbyter (pastor, or priest) Arius.

Arius proposed that if the Father begat the Son; the latter must have had a beginning, that there

was a time when he was not, and that his substance was from nothing like the rest of creation.

The Council of Nicea, a gathering similar to the one described in Acts 15:4-22, condemned the

beliefs of Arius and wrote the first version of the now famous creed proclaiming that the Son

was “one in being with the Father” by use of the Greek word “homoousios.”

Homoousios

Homoousios means “one substance” or “same substance.” The Greeks believed substance

was everything. All matter, to them, was made up of the four elements: earth, wind, fire, or air.

God, however, was none of those things. Even angels and the spirits of men were matter by

Greek thinking, meaning they believed there were only two substances in the universe. One is

God and the other is matter. Athenagoras wrote the following in 168 A.D., “We employ

language that makes a distinction between God and matter and the natures of both” (A Plea for

the Christians: 24). The question being asked at the Council of Nicea was … Is Christ of the

substance of God, or is he made of matter like us and the angels? At the Council of Nicea, this

question was very important. Athenagoras goes on to answer that question immediately:

We acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in

substance. (ibid.) Justin Martyr, a couple decades earlier, adds his testimony to

that of Athenagoras I asserted that this Power [i.e., Christ] was begotten from the

http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=English&version=RSV&search=&passage=Acts+15:4-22


Father, but not by abscission [i.e., cutting off], as if the substance of the Father

were divided. (Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew 128).

All of this applied to Arius' theology at the Council of Nicea. If the Son had a beginning,

as Arius was asserting, then he must be made of matter. After all, the substance of God can have

no beginning. On the other hand, if Christ is of God's substance, then he always existed. The

Church taught that Jesus was begotten of the Father, not just here on earth as a man, but in the

beginning as the Son of God. Proverbs 8:22 in the Greek Septuagint version used by the early

churches, say, “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.” The early churches

universally understood this to refer to them. Arius thought and argued that the begetting of the

Son constitutes a beginning. He could not have existed before then.

The “Holy” Trinity

The “Holy” Trinity of Christianity is the foundational doctrine of God in western

metaphysics. The Trinity tells us that there are three Persons in one Divine Nature. The names

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names of three distinct persons. God can serve as either a name

for the Father or a name for the Divine Nature - eternal perfections of God: Love, Goodness,

Justice etc. The Divine Nature is through which the Divine Persons are and through which they

act. In essence, the doctrine of the “Holy” trinity is used to explain the following declarations

found in the Scriptures:

There is only one God (Rom 3:30)

The Father is God (1 Cor 8:6)

Jesus is God (John 1:1)

The Holy Spirit is God (1 Cor 6:19)

Jesus is not the Father (John 1:1, Luke 3:21-22)

Jesus is not the Spirit (Luke 3:21-22)

The Father is not the Spirit (Luke 3:21-22)

http://www.christian-history.org/trinity-heresy.html

http://www.christian-history.org/trinity-heresy.html

http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Proverbs%208.22


1. God is not composed of matter. Instead his Nature refers to the eternal perfections that he

possesses: Love, Goodness, Power, etc.

2. God is not composed of parts. If God were composed of parts, then it would be necessary

to have a cause for the arrangement of the parts, and something else would be

fundamental.

3. There is only one Divine Nature. While there can be many hands, there can only be one

Divine Nature (www.columbia.edu).

The Doctrine Incarnation- the Divinity of Jesus Christ

The doctrine of the Incarnation is inseparable from the Trinity in discussions about the

God. The doctrine of the Incarnation unites the apparently contradictory statements:

Jesus is fully Man (John 1:14, Rev 1:13)

Jesus is fully God (Col 1:19, 2:9)

Jesus is one Person (1 Cor 8:6)

This doctrine works like the Trinity but in reverse. In Jesus' one Divine Person there are two

essences, his own copy of the human essence (which includes a human soul as well as a human

body), and the only copy of the Divine Essence. This means that it is possible for Jesus,

according to his human essence, to grow, learn, die, etc. and according to his Divine essence to

perform miracles, create from nothing, etc. The two essences each have their own set of

properties, and which properties you see in a verse in Scripture will have something to say about

one or the other of them (sometimes both). Because Jesus is human, he has a God to whom he

prays and to whom he offers worship. Because he is God he is properly the object of our

worship. It is hard to grasp this completely. Perhaps you have been wondering how it can be that

Jesus can die, yet we know that God cannot. Thus it would seem that having a Divine and human

essence is mutually exclusive. This is not so. Death is something that happens to a human nature;

http://www.columbia.edu/


specifically it is the separation of the body from the soul. The Divine Essence is not composed of

parts, and undergoes no separation. Thus, death is something that happens to a nature, but it is

the customary way of speaking to say it happens to the person who possesses that essence. We

do not say, for example, someone punched my human essence, we say someone punched me.

Thus, when Jesus died his body separated from his soul but His Divine Nature remained

unaltered. During this separation, Jesus still possessed a human soul which descended into Hell

(not for punishment, it would be a digression to go into the purpose here). Thus, while Jesus was

dead he was still human.

The Two Wills of Christ

The heresy that there is only one will in the incarnate Christ is called monothelitism and

arose from the Monophysite heresy (which said that there was only one nature in Christ). Christ

distinguishes his will from that of his Father in John 6:38, Matt 26:39, etc. Christ's relationship

of obedience to the Father only makes sense if Christ has a human will.

Athanasius said in his treatise on the Incarnation in 365 AD, “And when [Christ] says,

“Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me; yet, not My will be done, but Yours;” and

“the spirit is ready, but the flesh is weak,” He gives evidence therein of two wills, the one

human, which is of the flesh, and the other divine, which is of God. That which is human,

because of the weakness of the flesh, shrinks from suffering. That, however, which is divine, is

ready. Then too, Peter, hearing about the passion, says, “Cheer up, Lord;” but the Lord, chiding

him, says, “Get behind me Satan; you are a scandal to Me, because you are mindful not of the

things of God but of the things of men.” This too, then, is to be understood in the suffering; but

being God and, in accord with the divine substance, really being not subject to suffering, He

readily accepts suffering and death” (Quotation from Faith of the Early Fathers by William

http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=English&version=RSV&search=&passage=Matt+26:39

http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=English&version=RSV&search=&passage=John+6:38


Jurgens). The Council of Chalcedon said, “Similarly we promulgate, according to the teaching of

the Holy Fathers, that in Him are also two natural wills and two natural modes of working, un-

separated, untransformed, undivided, unmixed; and these two natural wills are not opposed to

each other as the impious heretics maintained.” (Ott: 291).

All the Gods Are Three: Ancient Egyptian Cosmogony and Monotheism

When looking at Western metaphysical concepts, we can agree that it differs from

African metaphysical concepts. Although they do differ, again, my argument is they do share a

common ancestor in Ancient Egyptian cosmogony. To show this connection between the

Ancient Egyptian cosmogony and Western metaphysics, I will use one of the most highly

controversial western metaphysical concepts of God – the Holy Trinity. Onyewuenyi quotes from

the 300th chapter of the Hymn to Amun as the Sole God from the Hermopolitan system of

Egyptian cosmogony:

All the Gods are three:

Amun, the Sun, and Ptah, without their second.

His identity is hidden in Amun

His is the Sun as face, his body is Ptah.

Their towns are on Earth, fixed for the span of Eternal Recurrence:

Thebes, Heliopolis, and Memphis, according to the pattern of Eternal

Sameness (184).

The above text illustrates the ancient Egyptians concept of oneness/unity of the three principle

gods – pre-dating the western concept of the Holy Trinity. Amun is a single deity manifested by

the three names of the religious centers of ancient Egypt: Thebes, Heliopolis, and Memphis

(185).

This proves my theory that the roots to the western metaphysical concept of the holy

trinity lie in Ancient Egyptian cosmogony. Monotheism has had a long and established tradition


within Ancient Egyptian cosmogony, even before the reign of the eighteenth dynasty Egyptian

Pharaoh Akhenaton – in Amarna Theology. Amarna theology universalized the powers and

functions of the traditional Egyptian gods into one – Amun the Sun-God. In the previous three

Egyptian cosmogony systems discussed earlier, Amun was regarded as the Supreme Being –

Creator God whose thought/intellect brought about creation. Now we see that Amun has been

transformed into the central “one” God. Even with this transformation in the role of Amun,

Amon-Ra is still considered King of the Gods (207). Even though Amarna Theology speaks to

the belief of a holy trinity, it still holds on to the idea of God being connected to the world in

some fashion.

Akhenaton takes the Amarna theology a step further. Akhenaton’s God – Aten is

“understood as the divine principle on which the existence and continuity of the universe

depends” (207). This concept is illustrated in the famous Hymn to the Aten written on the tomb

of Aya in Amarna “You have created the earth according to your own desire, you being alone”

(208). Akhenaton did away with the traditional Gods and concepts of the old system and

instituted the concept of the One God, creator of all and everything.

When examining the main themes of African and Western metaphysics, I find it

interesting that despite the so-called differences between the two – they share so much in

common in relation to their roots in Ancient Egyptian civilization. By studying Egypt and all of

its contributions to the world, we may finally come to a place where once again, great minds

from all over the world, learned from one another and added to the field of philosophy and life in

general. In Egypt we find all concepts that are now tearing people and communities apart. So

yes, there are differences between African and western metaphysics, and it all comes from one

source – Ancient Egypt.


Works Cited

Danquah, J. (1968). The Akan Doctrine of God: A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics and Religion. Routledge.

Diop, S. A. (1987). Pre-Colonial Black Africa: a Comparative Study of the Political and Social systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States. Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Co. .

Onyewuenyi, I. C. (2005). The African Origin of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in Afrocentrism. Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press.

Ott, Ludwig Dr. (1960). Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Tan Books and Publishers:Rockford, Illionis

Wingo, Ajume. (2008). Akan Philosophy of the Person. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/akan- person/.

Wiredu, K. (2003). On Decolonizing African Religions. In P. H. Coetzee, & A. P. Roux, The African Philosophy Reader (pp. 21,22,23,37,38). New York: Routledge.

Van Anlagen, Peter. (2012). Metaphysics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/metaphysics/>.




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Universal Truths Final Revision