MYSTERY OF IGBO COSMOLOGY
The Mystery of
Number, “Five” in the Igbo Cosmology.
From: Aspects
of the Ancient African Metaphysics;
Chapter: Seven;
Topic: Igbo
Geometries and the Metaphysics of Numbers.
Author: Onyeji
Nnaji.
In the Igbo
cosmology, the word Isee is a definite symbolic word as revealed through
the Igbo language and culture. A human being has five fingers, five toes. The
hands and feet are fundamentals to the survival in life as they are necessary
in ensuring that man moves to places where he gets food and grapples on the
food to sustain his life. To this view, the rhetoric that binds vocatives in
the form of incantation (anchoring on the heart-lock: four) and the
concomitant reprisal in the manner of affirmation that holds the human life
bind to his original spiritual person, therefore defining existence and
essences are unified by the corresponding echo: Isee!!!!! Therefore
it stands that anytime a prayer is said in the Igbo land, the attendants who would
want the fulfillment of the prayer unanimously affirmed the prayer by saying
Isee! Five then becomes the language of the spirit, the language of the creator
that indicates agreement to, not every sayings but those that carry creative
power, indicate affirmation. It is even obvious when it is demonstrated
dramatically as the Igbo affirm the prayers said in their midst. If a kolanut
is broken and the Igbo say prayers, as soon as he mentions the blessings or wishes
associated with lives, the attendants go in to affirm them thus: Isee! Then,
dramatically, everyone points his fingers towards the soil. Put in another way,
the spontaneity of the unanimous drama is an indication that Isee (five)
is associated with the soil which is represented in the mystic concept as the
primordial god, Ala.
Among the Igbo
the number five has great symbolic significance. If a kolanut is broken and it
has five lobes it means good luck to the sharer. It also refers to stability. Thus isee
reflect axiomatic values, five definite realization on which the life of every
Igbo rests. They are: life, children, wealth, peace and love (Ekwunife, 1990). Another
word for the meaning of an axiom could be simply, self evidence. The principal of
the axioms kept by the Igbo are derived from the natural law, and the Igbo
ascribed the source and making of these law to the primordial goddess of the earth, Ala.
Ala is the moral concomitance of the natural law and the exercise of authorities
binding on these laws by Ala gave the ancient Igbo the impetus to ascribe
reverence to Ala goddess as a primal god. This religious practice stood and still
stands the Igbo different from every other ancient worlds, races, tribes and people.
This primal goddess is represented everywhere among the Igbo communities with a
stepped earth, and the geometry is five. Significant enough, Eze Nri
clarifies that in the days of creation, Chukwu Okike eminently started his creation
upon an anthill, for the earth was covered by water. It was on this anthill that
the first man (believed to be the ancestor of the Igbo race) landed via a rope from
the sky. From hence was the goddess Ala revered by the Igbo as the original being.
It was revealed
that, as man continued to spread (moving to places) in the search for food and
hunting of animals, it soon occurred to them to make a construction upon the anthill
where Ala was worshipped. They made the constructions in the form of
pyramids. But so amazing; the pyramids where of five significant steps. Till
date, they still stand on the valley of the land of today Nsude in Enugu State,
Nigeria. The ancient fathers of the Igbo community that lived in this area
adopted these pyramids as symbols of the anthill that marked the beginning of
creations and had it as the more credible trace of their paths as they
continued in their vagrancy across people. This indirectly reveals the mystery
of five in the Igbo cosmology. According to elders of Nsude, the ten pyramids
were constructed at the time when human beings had no idea of constructing a
place of living. The ancient Igbo ancestors lived in caves from where they set off
in search of food and meat. Wherever night caught up with them they slept to
continue from there the succeeding days. Professor A. E. Afigbo (1981) in his Ropes
of Sand first muted the idea of the origin of Igbo Traditional religion,
and I share his insight on the subject. He noted thus:
The history of
the origin of Igbo traditional religion must be sought within Igbo history of
origin. Igbo lived a hazardous wandering life of the hunter and gatherer of
wild edible plants. The tradition of Nri disclosed how the Igbo entered a
settled 1ife which brought him further development of skills. (P.9).
He further noted
that the period was “the Age of Innocence when our earliest Igbo
ancestors walked
with God and were fed divine substance as food: an Eternal Day
with no night,
sleep or toil”.
Nsude, Agbaja
Pyramids
Egyptian account
of creation holds to this similar view alongside the Jewish Cabala.
These later records intoned that God first raised a mound upon which He stood
when He created all that was created. According to Egyptology, the pyramid in
Saqqara was designed to commemorate this concept. Among the Jews of Israel, this
culture – supposedly acquired from Egypt – is still celebrated with the gathering
of sand to commemorate the same concept. The pyramid in Saqqara followed the
same pattern to reveal the close relationship between the builders of the
different pyramids at different places and time. stepped pyramid in Saqqara,
Egypt. 2,630 BC.
On the contrary,
the most significant god in Egypt is the sun; not Ala. If the original
intention for this among the Egyptians were as stated above the historians supposedly
had lost the knowledge of the history of the stepped pyramid. The mystery
surrounding the pyramid and the ideology for setting up the pyramid xrays the
history of the civilization of ancient Egypt herself. Therefore, the pyramid culture
was adopted as the written code and a part-tracing diamond to the civilizers of
the ancient Egypt. This was not the only thing Egypt lost about her history;
she is till date ignorant of the original name of the land today called Egypt.
But Nag Hammadi record has come to help in tracing certain part of the eluded
history. At least, it gives explanations concerning the civilization of Egypt.
According to the
record kept by Canadian Museum of History concerning the civilization of Egypt,
it reveals that:
The seed of
civilization were first sown along the bank of the Nile. This mighty river which
flows north from the heart of Africa… In predynastic times, nomadic hunters
settled in the valley and began to grow crops to supplement their
food supply.
These nomadic
hunters who settled at the bank of the Nile River were philosophers and scribes
who made use of slate books and wooden axes; the same were people whose
activities attracted the attention of the communities in the upland. These nomadic
hunters were the civilizers of Egypt. The 2,000 year old Nag Hammadi Scriptures
uncovered 1950s deep in the desert-sands of Egypt, adds the final missing links
to the mystery of Igbo identity as associated with the civilization of Egypt.
The document explains the feature of the people who gave Egypt her civilization.
It tells about a people whose cosmology is rooted in the numbers four and
eight, who emanated from the realm of the Eternal Day (as Afigbo also affirmed)
where there was no Darkness, nor toil, nor sleep; a
“kingless
generation with no kingdom over them because they are all kings (Igbo Enwe Eze); a people whose “most
central symbol is the quadrangle” (the basic geometry of Igbo ichi); a people
who “worship the Primal Goddess” (as in Ala/Ani); a people among whom “the
three entities Father, Mother and Child exist as perceptible speech having
within it three names abiding in three nnn” as in Nne, Nna and Nwa
or Nwoke, Nwanyi and Nwata. “The First Sons of the true God---
the fourth generation, which is the most exalted, is kingless and perfect.” From
creation, the Igbo was originally kingless,
Nag Hammadi was
not the only proof of this. The ancestors of the Igbo race saw everyone
with the equal content of the same god-man spirit each person carried.
Egyptian records reveal this better and associate the same character to
the characteristic Igbo society of the ancient communities. It remarks
thus:
“In the
beginning the beings had energy of royalty majesty,” literally a concept, idea
or instinct which impinged itself in man and made him see himself as equal to
his neighbour;” for they were all royalty”. That is the principle, and Egypt
has the people of this principle as “the origin of world history and
civilization.” Viz, that “all began with energy and energy is existence and the
correct frequency of existence is the true definition of truth and love…”
This people were
the teachers of the Egyptian knowledge of the old. The Igbo gained a settle
lifestyle after they began to understand the principle of planting and harvesting
– according to Eze Nri – then became organized into supper structure under the
leadership of two distinct god-men; the theosophists and the theocrats. They
had no king and were never organized under a sole leadership rather than the conceptual
democratic lifestyle until the advent of the colonial masters.
An American
anthropologist who studied the Igbo community of Onitsha as late as
1913 still found
colossal evidence among the Igbo to entitle his book The King in Every Man.
The later generation among these beings with energy of royalty was retained
as priests and diviners, teachers and spiritualists. Chesi (1985:7), emphasizing
the potency of rituals in Africa, asserts thus “people say that in former times all men
carried a share of the gods in them, and vice versa. The task of the ritual is
to activate and to intensify these shares so as to enable man to be divine for a
certain period of time.”
Now, the stepped
pyramid at Saqqara, perhaps were constructed as the more credible route towards
tracing the part the civilizers had followed (their origin). Similar pyramids
of five steps were placed in Saqqara as replicas of the original pyramids here
in Nsude, which housed the primordial goddess Ala, and of course the primal
mound of the mythical anthill. In the book, Before the Pyramids, compiled
by a group of editors and authored by Emily Teeter, a mystery was uncovered
bothering on the history of the great pyramid in Saqqara. The bookindicates
that there was a label found containing a pictorial which was suspected to have
been engraved on stones earlier. The label was very difficult to study, but the
possible indication found was that it housed the secret binding on the
existence of the stepped pyramid (P. 101). Of course, Djoser the third dynasty
king of Egypt who ordered for a monument to be constructed did not know what a
pyramid was when Imhotep instructed him to construct a pyramid. Because Djoser
did not know what the pyramid was, he would possibly not know certain seals
enclosed in the construction. Only Imhotep would know the inscriptions on this
label as one of the remnant god-men. Imhotep was described as an architect, a
priest and a healer; a god-man who had understanding of history, time and
people. Nnaji has
explained this label in his book Reminiscence.
Judging from the periods of these pyramids, it was clear that the period of
the civilizers, as Nag Hammadi and Book of the Dead revealed is different from
the time of the Saqqara pyramid (2,630 BC).
The Nsude
pyramids were constructed before the Igbo ancestors had a settled life; many
centuries before industrialization in the ancient Igbo societies. In the twenty
first century, an Iron Smelting Site was discovered in Lejja,
Lejja Iron
Smelting Site. Over 4000 BC Enugu State of Nigeria. Lejja is located within the
same area where the stepped pyramids where constructed by the ancient Igbo
fathers. Out of the hips of the charcoal found in the site, a sample was
collected and estimated in the Oxford University Accelerator Spectronometry
Laboratory to have lasted more than 4,000 BC. If ordinary charcoal should be
older than the Saqqara pyramid, it should be apparent that the owner of that
industrial site (whoever he might be) did not live in isolated as he had
outnumbered population whom he worked for. Of course, his ancestors also may
have worked in the site. The document in the Canadian museum gives us another
important information about the pyramids in Saqqara.
According to the
Canadian records, “the feature of the pyramids (in Egypt) was
haped like the sacred mound where the gods
first appeared in the creation story”.
he document reveals further thus:
Today, Egyptian
archaeologists are still making important discoveries and the scientific study
of the royal mommies shedding new light on the genealogy of the pharaohs. The
ongoing deciphering of the hieroglyphic writings and research on the
life of the peasants (the nomadic hunters) are also answering
questions related to the evolution of Egyptian culture. Canadian Museum of
History.
Every facet of
Egytian records showed their indebtedness to these nomadic hunters, the
god-men, the kingless society (the Never-been-ruled), the people who owned the
pyramid culture and the people whose creation myth is anchored on the primordial
mound; these were the philosophers, teachers and scribes who made use of
scarified inscriptions on ancient stones: the people who gave ancient Egypt her
civilization when she still retained her original name. Egyptology is now aware
that the land of the rising sun is not in East Africa, instead West Africa. It
is evident here that the history of the peasants (the hunters) who settled
along the coastal region of the Nile River is necessary to almost (if not) all
the answer concerning the evolution of the Egyptian culture and civilization.
The discovering
made in Egypt is shading more light on the proof that the civilizers of Egypt
were not Egyptians. It also indicates that it was possible the same civilizers
were the dynastic race. Citing Petrie (1939, p.153) on the history of Egyptian
civilization, Teeter asserts thus,
Petrie was a devotee of the “dynastic
race” theory, believing that the founders of Egyptian civilization came from
outside the country. In 1893/1894, he obtained from the Service des Antiquites
permission to excavate at Koptos, where he believed the “dynastic race” would
have first settled in the Nile Valley after entering Egypt… He was rewarded
with the discovery of three larger-than-lifesize statues of local gods Min
decorated with emblems (the same with Igbo Ukwu emblem) in low relief which
where unlike typical “pharaonic” motifs. Petrie felt sure that those statues
were very early in date –“prehistoric as he described them – and was pleased
when two of the statues were assigned to him in the division of antiquities at
the British Museum, but they were rejected as being “unhistorical rather than
prehistoric” (Before.
18).
Petrie’s role in
the discovering of early Egypt cannot be overestimated, although he did not
have explicit information regarding the date or period of the things he founded.
At last he concluded that “Egyptian civilization was the product of predynastic
race who had entered Egypt in the predynastic period via Punt (Punt is in
Egyptian mythology expressed as the land of the rising sun: the home of the gods)
and became her rulers.” (Petrie 1939: 77-78) It is no longer strange to establish
that Egypt was civilized by the god-men who left Igbo Ukwu in the age of the
industrial evolution that swept across the east; around 500,000BC. (see Nnaji’s
Earth-to-Earth). Teeter even asserts vividly that the “direct evolution
of civilization in the Nile Valley from the Paleolithic time through Predynastic
Egypt to a fully-fledged monumental civilization was already well attested.”
The Nsude
pyramids were first excavated by the archaeologist, G.I. Jones in the early
part of 1930s. He took the photograph of the pyramids which he kept in t e
museum of
anthropology and archaeology at Cambridge University. The mystery of the number
five is the mystery of the primordial goddess, Ala. The same is the mystery
surrounding the anthill as weaved into play by the ancient Nri creation myth.
This mystery is the meaning of the pyramid and the history of world civilization,
democracy and governance. The five steps of the pyramids, as stratified,
represent the basic meaning the Igbo hold as the principle of life; the axiom
as stated at the beginning of this phase. They bother on life, children, wealth,
peace and unity. It is in the Igbo culture alone that the five comprehensible cosmological
models of the human body are recognized. These of course, exclude those models
whose core precepts are now less propagated by giving their archive familiarities
since ancient. The conviction ancient Igbo metaphysics have over life and
creation are embedded in the Igbo geometrical concept and it is only through an
added understanding of these geometries that their meanings can be deciphered.
Please disregard this article, it's full of lies!
ReplyDeleteWould that you were able to prove the article lies, i would be grateful to applaud your constructive wit. Please show me what you think is not true: is it the pictures, the terms used which you did not know because you have never studied beyond your area of interest? or is it the sentences that are incorrect? If i were you, i would sit up and study to prove this article untrue.
DeleteOne problem i have discovered in my study of prehistory is that so many things come together in order to interpret a particular traditional concept. History too is an embodiment of facets. To interpret ancient history, one need to have the knowledge of the tradition that institute such a culturally bound history. here mysticism comes in.
I challenge you to study and disprove this article of the truth it claims, quoting the authorities that can be reached by another researcher; not you alone or making claims that have no standpoint supported by any authority by reason of findings. I have quoted over five solid texts here, do tell me which is not true
Beside, I don't think you are a human being, otherwise your name and email should be indicative here.
OMERTO E-470 IKECHUKWU OHIOMU FAMILY & FRIENDS
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