Setswana in the very roots of mankind (Part 1)

L M Leteane | Friday August 7, 2015 17:35

It all began with the Anunnaki. Nobody knows how old these beings of antiquity truly are. Traces of their unbelievable sophistication have been unearthed in fossils as old as 300 million years or more. One thing we can be assured of is that, anatomically, they are very much like modern man. Indeed, even as “Forbidden Archaeology” reveals, “modern” human remains have been discovered in undisturbed earth strata relating to millions of years ago; a time, anthropologists tells us, modern man was still far from appearing. My column has explained at length the comings and goings of this mysterious race, so let us cut to the chase and show that we too can interpret the term “Anunnaki”.

ANU.NNA.KI. Anu (as in “ano a”) means “those over there”, nna is “stay/reside”, and Ki means “Earth” – thus: “those from out there who settled on Earth”. Ki is the only word that might puzzle a Motswana but it is easily understandable. “Ea!” (e ha: “here it is”) they shouted triumphantly as an expedition confirmed that conditions here were perfect. “Ea”, we can be sure, is the root of “Earth”. Unsurprisingly, the Sumerian KI (ke-e), as well as the Greek geo (ke-o), all mean “here it is”, Setswana being the only language to seamlessly connect all these variations. Here, the Anunnaki only found backward humanoid species roaming the Earth. Minerals were, of course, necessary to kick-start civilisation, and being the only ones having the skills to conduct mining, the Anunnaki y toiled at it. Per the Atra-Hasis, they eventually rebelled at their conditions (no doubt caused by ever-deepening mine-shafts).A solution had to be found.  “Let us make a LU.LU to bear the burden of the gods”, suggested Enki, Earth’s second-in-command and Chief Scientist.  “Lulu” is described as “mixed creature” in most translations of the Atra-Hasis: a hybrid of the Anunnaki and Cro-Magnon man. Once again, Setswana can interpret the term independently. Lo se, lo se (you are this you are that)the Anunnaki “gods” would tease them...lo-lo. Of course, lo-lo is at the root of terms like mo-lolo (mild, neither hot nor cold) and loile (a term describing a rich mixture). Even the English expression “gone lulu” –used to describe a “mixed-up’ person –hints at this ancient term well understood in Setswana.

Now, everyone knows that animal hybrids (such as mule), tend to be sterile. So, this new labour force was produced through prepared implants inserted into “birth goddesses”. Soon, these goddesses began to complain of their strenuous duty, but Enlil, Earth’s number one, did not want it any other way. He foresaw trouble if this hybrid was to be genetically treated to be fertile. But Enki heard the plight of the birth goddesses and secretly created a new Lulu capable of breeding: a mo-ata (ata-mo [Adam] in Hebrew syntax: “the procreating one”).  Being an extremely ancient term, it eventually lent itself to other expressions. A tamo also means “the wet one” – reference to the sperm. Of course, from English, we all know that words like “dam” and “damp” allude to wetness, but surely we have no Setswana word to equate with tamo. Wrong.  Tamusa in Setswana literally means “to make wet” typically by, for example, squeezing juice – the wetness – out of a fruit. “Eve”, we are about find out, simply means “egg” (l’ouef in French: “the egg” – and pronounced something like le-efe). In Bantu languages f an h are often interchangeable, so in Sotho “egg” is le-ehe. The sperm and the egg!

Fertility, indeed, was at the heart of the contention between Enlil and Enki the ruling half-brothers. When Enlil found out about the new pair capable of breeding he was furious. Having not the heart to kill them, he confiscated the pair from Enki, before they had the chance to breed and placed them in his lush private premises at Eden where he could keep a close watch on them. What is “Eden”? The key word here is “en”. It stems from ene, which in Setswana means “he himself”. Being a term that focussed on a prominent personality, it became synonymous with “lord”, thus “Enlil” is literally Ene-le-Illu (“the main Illu himself”, their leader) and Enki is “Lord of Earth” – a title meant to appease the latter (he was actually elder to Enlil, but certain well-defined succession rules were being followed). E-di-ene simply means “place of the gods”, and here the e is better expressed in Nguni (e-khaya, e-zulwini, etc) where it means “place of”. Language is, of course, dynamic and interactive and other Bantu languages also hold clues..

In order to keep them fearful and innocent, the first thing Enlil did was to deliver a frightening speech to the fertile pair. “You must not touch there, or play with those things, or you will surely die”. But one day Enki came along and began to “show them the way”. When Enlil found out he went berserk. Before he ejected the out of Eden, he told he man something along these lines: “You led a life of ease in my own residence, and this is how you reward me? You will return to the place where I rescued you from, there in the ground (the mines), to toil there as was your fate”. And to the woman he warned “you will soon experience the pains of childbirth”. Of course, in the bible the detailed Atra-Hasis account of “gods” and “mining” is circumvented (the Atra-Hasis is millennia older than Genesis) and mankind is supposed to have been “created out of the ground (dust) and there he shall return”. Next week we uncover many more crucial Setswana words that help us better decipher the still-ill-understood roots of humankind.

 

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