Project Milestone - For the 500th Proverb - milestone ...

Warning:

For all the nostalgia, tedium and anachronism expressed in this piece we are just trying to fill a blog post ...



For the 500th milestone it seemed right and harmonious to us to mark such a position by posting excerpts from an article currently being written ... [See the excerpts from 'A theory of Hebraic Origins/Kinships for the Igbos/Ibos/Igbos? - An Investigation - excerpts appear after the current preface ...]

In the past months, there have been threads in social space, discussing in a totally random, 'fast and loose' manner - the founding myths and original stories of the Igbos. Our elders are dying and taking their myths to their graves with them ... Our younger men and women are totally engaged in the ways and means of making a living for themselves in the frenetic pace that life demands in a post-modern world. 

Against this zeitgeist we are losing some historical perspective and our narratives are increasingly sounding hollow ...

Life is too much with us. We don't stand and we cannot stare. We live in a heady rushy 'now' which we forget as soon as we have experienced it and our history - the weight of it and attendant stories (nascent and past) lie in a soil which has laid fallow and unproductive a long time.
 

We imagine that our heritage (and culture) is great and deserves more.  We hear the voice of that  greatness as a people but we don't seem to understand what it is saying.

For my generation, the post-war one (the war being the Biafran war - I was born in '72), we can hardly remember a time beyond 1960; and as 'things fell apart' with our society - the bitterness and resentment felt by our elders at the loosening centre (of Achebe's implied reference) expressed itself in a kind of cultural 'omerta'. The word elders by definition implies the sense of those who would know most by reason of being older in time.  For a people who worshipped our ancestors, we have been left rather in a lurch by their wisdoms ...

Our 'greatest' living literary sage, C. Achebe with his scholarly mind gave us stories that generally date from 1800 to the present time. We have just buried General Ojukwu (him, of the Sacred Biafran War hagiography) - a kind of generalised first king of the Igbos - Eze Igbo gburu gburu - which to my mind has implications for how our history is now viewed and enjoyed.  Our newest celebrity of note and rising literary star, Chimamanda is contributing fabulous books and stories, her imagination ranging from the period 1900 to the present time ... So we suffer from a kind of historical foreshortening and we all live in a time capsule of sorts ...

Lines from a poem describe this general sense of bereft-ness (sic).

Who will tell the young-lings of  edible ants?
that appear at the instance of the first rainfall
And if we rue the healing knowledge of our plants
Who's left to wonder of it all?

We definitely need to deepen our roots (and penetrate through or reconstruct at any rate earlier portions of our history) ... [This is one view] and we may have to de-mythologise sections of it.

One way is to try to seek out original stories and to penetrate through to the oldest surviving members of our tribes and families and probe their minds a little ... if we do find any wisdom still forming part of the husks of their minds - we should do well to transpose these to the fresh templates and media spaces of today. Imagining this can be done, we should reap an invaluable barn of treasure. 

I am starting with my father, and his father before him (already late ... :-))

There is no mine, like the sentience of an old person.


For information about the Igbos: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbos

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The following excerpts are from the article  'A theory of Hebraic Origins for the Igbos? - An Investigation ' - Are we members of a lost tribe? We certainly may not be Jews? What's this talk of Sky beings? Who is Eri? Ndị Nrị kwanụ? Ọdịnanị? IsiMbidi? Ikpe Ụka ?

These are fascinating, and at some level controversial, questions ... This editorial, the excerpts and picture together form your 500th milestone. The picture is from GT Basden's book - Among the Ibos of Nigeria, first prints 1920 ...

The Caption Reads:
Hair-Dressing as a 'Work of Art': Charcoal dust and palm oil are freely used, but should necessity arise, the structure must be cut away entirely, as it cannot be "undone".

Clicking on the graphic expands it to reveal this bit of writing on an inlaid photo on the second page of Basden's book. I have overlaid the scanned page with an 'extra' bright sheen or layer in Photoshop, to better highlight the ridges of the woman's hair style.

I for one, never knew our women used to innovate with Charcoal dust and Palm oil ...  I am now 40 years old and I haven't even once seen this technique repeated with our ladies. Progress or lost 'technology' ?

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Excerpt 1

The first Igbo person that 'publicly' [pro ... ] claimed descent from Jews or Hebrews (Habiru's, Hebos, Igbos, Ibos?) is Olaudah Equiano - his account of the deliberations can be found in his book, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. The book was first published in 1814 and from it may be gained many good glimpses of the milieu into which this notion was first unleashed on a sceptical world ... So this theory of Hebraisms is not as fanciful and modern as many modern disparagers (sic) like to think. If as we have seen all of Africa at a stage in our prehistory was viewed variously as Ethiopia, Libya, Kush, Saara or Alkebulan (from the evidence of antique maps  and other  anecdotal sources) then it is not all that curious that Olaudah might have found credulity among those that first heard him or saw him published. In fact, he at some point in his book  describes himself by the appellation 'The Oppressed Ethiopian'.

Excerpt 2 [About Research!]

If as we are saying, our questions and questing are valid questions and concerns, then we also must turn attention to the added question of how best they may be answered – the questions, and how to imbue our questing with the dignity and respect that it deserves – the questing.
Now, I know that each piece of writing has an intended audience and not everyone will persevere and abide the tedium of pieces such as this one, but in choosing not to ‘dumb down’ the tone and general character of this article I am rather, trying to commend it to the greater intellects of the rule makers and guardians of culture everywhere – those grand label makers and gate keepers of the stocks:

I too, dwell in the crescent (Akkadia), and there you may find me, striving for life among the mangroves … 

My point is this: for this article to enjoy scholarly merit, it must earn the credit of serious scholars and must garner the credentials of serious scholarship.
To this end, we will give proper care to a passable, proper formulation of our questions and hypotheses and go about our questing by engaging in serious research and a near thorough ‘means-testing’. To speak of means only reveals that we intend certain ends and conclusions to follow as a result of our questing. And we shall present these conclusions, such as they are near the end of this article. 

Excerpt 3

[Recent literature and Media Review]

I have just finished reading a fascinating book – The Lost Tribes Of Israel. The History Of A Myth, by Tudor Parfitt, 2002; and I recommend it to everyone interested in this subject. The man writes beautifully covering in highlights, the various tracings of this subject as it has been studied by many scholars, kings, politicians and interests around the world from earlier centuries down to the present day. The general theme of his book however appears to be that there are most certainly no 'lost tribes' to be found anywhere in the world and that various communities who in the present day claim to be members of any such communities are only trying to create for themselves an imagined identity based on a collective phantasm of early ‘creators’, geographers, scientists, explorers, cartographers, linguists and religionists of modern history.  The book abstracts from, he writes, historical fact – the biblical record of the disappearance of ten tribes of Israel  –  to a myth given rise to by the occurrence of the fact. He then proceeds to describe this myth in its many incarnations and its implications for various communities around the world. One interesting theory of the book is that imagining Jewish communities thriving and abounding beyond the borders of their immediate knowledge was a favourite and particularly strange fantasy of Europeans and also of other groups whose cultures were in the ascendancy at various points in history. 

Excerpt 4

Among the many subjects of the liberal arts, we  find many disciplines that can confer a world view, modify an existing world view of someone or even change a world view completely. These days with the convergence in studies and subject areas and the blurring of distinctions many other disciplines may also alter an existing thesis. We hear about and are perhaps most familiar with the way this happens in science.

Traditionally religion offers the most resistance to world views inspired by it for obvious reasons. Religions in most cases deal with absolute truth. In modern times, liberal theologians (I am heavily influenced by this school) have tried to substitute the word ultimate for absolute – but that is the subject of another study.

My point is that from classical times; literature, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology and science were important for understanding a people - for a world view in other words. As time has progressed – historical analysis and theorising have given rise to the science and theory of archaeology considered as subject under the heading humanities, necessary for understanding a people, yet for cultures such as ours which has hardly had excavations performed specifically for it, it is more important to consider the characteristic witness of language. The study of language is thus one of those disciplines that can inform whole regions of experience. Although only a partially literate culture (we have considered how the Nsi Mbidi script – Isi Mbdio  –  is best considered a form of hieroglyphics and how it being a secret code of communication made it only of partial influence) - an analysis can be made of how we have used words and the development of our named languages and words through history.

Our culture has had very little evidence of 'history' gathered through archaeology. Apart from the Igbo Ukwu finds - the archaeological evidence for developments with our culture is  sparse. Experts do not all agree either about what the Igbo Ukwu finds represent for us the Igbo and for the larger culture and history of the world. The theories are nascent and developing. Archaeology is a comparatively young science / discipline – since no nascent society feels a need to dig up its own substructure to learn about itself. Almost everywhere where archaeology has contributed to knowledge, it has contributed to knowledge of civilisations past. So apart from little 'off topic' excavations performed for academic or scientific reasons, archaeology is chiefly about studying past civilisations and this is its main stay. It was only as the major exploring countries of Europe – Britain, Spain, France –  turned their attention outward on communities around the world over which their armaments and ships had given them temporary superiority that individuals realised that they could make a name together with a great fortune by excavating the topsoil belonging to host communities if such communities were thought to be sites of antique or ancient civilisations of interest.
In such ways the names of 'discoverers' of past American places, Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh came to belong to Europeans.

It is the thesis of this article that to learn again about ourselves and the states and estates of our prehistory – a nascent civilisation (still existing as a sub-group of people), a study of our languages (Igbo and dialects) and language history is and will offer more clues than the science of archaeology.

So little archaeology has been performed in our lands anyway, it is also arguable that a lot which may be found of importance has already been carted away to the museums of Europe, by the British, our colonizers.

So language analysis is the way to go.

To delve a bit into  what such a programme might entail, a game like the following may be attempted in various contexts  and for applicable words and word families.

Why did/do the Igbos use phrases like … 'Ke mbge Eri' … Oke mgbe Eri? Some say 'Eri mgbe'.

Mgbe Eri means literally Eri's time and functions  as a datum against which  Igbo history is to to be reckoned.  To say therefore 'Oke mgbe Eri '– is to signify the passage of time – by saying literally – since Eri's time. Showing Eri to be both a significant cipher used in common language and a great ancestor existing from prehistoric times. Igbos use the phrases descriptively to signify the sense of time passing or to describe things happening from their very beginnings or inception.

Infact the name of this ancestor can be seen in the suggestive names adopted  for things … Eri = Echi (means days), Nri = Food with the leading E dropped. Another word, Mmiri = Water might be imaginatively described when contracted in its etymology to Imi Eri (which means 'the nose does not eat' ) since one does not eat or drink water by the nose. Mmiri becomes figuratively that which can only be ingested through the mouth orifice and not the nostrils. At another level – it simply means Eri's nose. With many words in our language we find this three letter signature of the ancestor's name, clear as a cipher within our words. At other times, it becomes a guessing game to spot the cipher. 

Consider the names of proper towns among the Igbo. Agulueri (Eri's line), Nri (the ontologoical kingdom), Umueri, Mbieri, Nnewi, Enyimba (-Eri-mba) etc ... you can imaginatively see the three-letter -eri- cipher in the names of many proper nouns and towns.

In Nicholas Ostler's excellent book, Empires of the word : A language history of the world, he makes the point in a section forming part of the preface that:

Far more than princes, states or economies. It is language communities who are the real players in world history ... [languages], persisting through the ages, clearly and consciously perceived by their speakers as symbols of identity, but nonetheless gradually changing and perhaps splitting or even merging as the communities react to new realities.

So according to this author  language may be viewed among the cardinal things by which a people subsist, thrive and extend their influence. You bet that if there are any definite clues about a people's pre-existence and history, their language would contain as many clues as other leads.

Excerpt 5

In their book The Archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African History edited by Christoper Ehret and Merrick Posnansky ...  

Excerpt 6
Yet we should be careful of categories to which we are not wholly subscribed, which are nonetheless applied to us. For instance, historically the Igbo language(s) and dialects in Africa have been grouped among the congo-belt of languages and have been generally described as part of Bantu speaking groups.

Bantu languages describe a group stretching from West Africa down through the south west African coast through the two Congos across to the coast on the other side of Africa; yet such an analysis made by past scholars can be challenged in our day. Igbos (ndị Igbo) in the final analysis may not be classed as Bantu-speaking at all. The stretch on any modern map depicting or tracing such a nomenclature just described above, shows an important thing happening as soon as you hit the south coast of present-day Nigeria.
In the delta alone, you have communities split by a multiplicity of languages - each one diverse - and among communities dwelling slightly inward of the coast, you find a vast stretch of Igbo language speakers dominating the space right up to the boundaries formed by the confluence of the rivers Niger and Benue.
When certain nodes of this Igbo language are probed - they yield marks and makings of influences which yield from old nilitic, numidic, ethiopic or semitic sources and inferences. Some scholars have spoken of similarities to old Hebrew and the parallelism of our phrases¹.

Conclusion.

Even the name Igbo or Ibo suggests a derivation from nilitic high culture. Among the annals of ancient Egypt you find no reference to Hebrews (the name), although we know from the early Jewish books and Christian scriptures that the people had been among the ancient Egyptians as immigrants and nomads. In the annals of Egypt, you find instead a reference to Habpirus, Haribus (from Akkadia of Babylonia pronounced Apirs), shortened often and variously to Ibririm, Ibrus, Ibers or Ebers being the named grouping typically known as the Hebrews.  

From Ibrus ... it is not perhaps too far a stretch of the imagination to find a group of similarly named Ibows or Ibos  following a re-migration (a theory we have been advancing), settling around the Niger (once thought co-extensive with the Nile). A group, which in their art shows evidence of influences drawn from old Egypt and Ethiopia-Soudan (from archaeology: a bowl born up by intricate sinewy arms holding up the main body of the vessel as in Egypt² , also the figure of the ram god), a group - circumcising their offspring; wholly farmers in their orientation and outlook;  with hardly any pig farming. Killing rams, chickens and other animals for food and as part of ritual sacrifice and who in the highest past flowering of their partial literate culture in antiquity - showed a form of writing just like hieroglyphics. 

All this quite apart from their own statements about descent from an ancestor named Eri (a priest of ancient Egypt and of Hebrew stock), son of Gad and grandson of the patriarch Jacob.  It may be found in the final analysis that we are not even employing imagination at all;  ... that there are definite Hebraic linkages.

We may have become anaesthetised from these elements of our history stretching through from prehistory in antiquity right through to the current era (our current era dating from the arrival of the first European men in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) or  we may be put off by past apathy regarding them.  Whichever the case, none of it changes the truth. Already,  ... like sleeping beauty, Igbo scholars are awaking from  their centuries' old sleep  to  demand the evidence  anew and to look at the questions in fresh ways. 
In our day fresh hands will rework the theories and flesh out the clues.



1 The Lower Niger and its Tribes, Pages 44,45  by Major Arthur G. Leonard, written a few years into the past century (1906, London, Macmillan and Co, Limited).  
2 Hebrewisms of West Africa. From Nile to Niger with the Jews., Pages 104,105  by Joseph J Williams.

The full article from which these excerpts have been made will be published in full and can be downloaded from this site at a later date.   


Disclaimer: The author of this piece wishes to state categorically that many Igbos are not persuaded of any Hebrew, Hebraic heritage - ancient or modern and of this group, may be found many persons who participated in the IgF&T project. Their participation in IgF&T does not in anyway equate to an endorsement of any views espoused here in the article. If you find any inconsistencies, partial references, defamation, errors in historical analysis or otherwise general errors of grammar and such and want to discuss or correct them, please write to kelechi.isiodu@facebook.com

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© ifont 2011, as it appears here.