Unearthing the etymology of �tau� and �leo�

L M Leteane | Friday December 18, 2015 17:02

Thus, the Taung district (‘taung’ means ‘place of the lion’) in the predominantly Setswana-speaking province of North West in South Africa – where the revered Tiger Kloof boarding school is situated – entails the name Podumong. This name itself can be unbundled as comprised of poo (literally meaning ‘bull’ in today’s terms, but originally meaning ‘boss’ or ‘ruler’) and dumo (noisy) – thus ‘noisy king’ – alluding, of course, to the lion’s intimidating roar.

The primordial etymology of the term ‘leo’ – as meaning ‘lion’ – is itself better unearthed through Setswana. The original term was evidently ‘le-One’ (‘the king’: lyon in French) – a term befitting the ‘king of the jungle’! Those who follow my column religiously will not be surprised about the association of ‘One’ with ‘king’. Last week I unbundled the real meaning of ene (‘himself’) as having meant ‘lord’ in Sumerian. Thus, ‘Enki’ (EN.KI) was ‘Lord of Earth’ and ‘Enlil’ (EN.L’ILLU, or Ene-le-Illu) was ‘Lord of the Gods’. But I also showed in previous articles that ene and one mean exactly the same in Setswana, thus the Egyptian god ‘At-en’ (ata means ‘multiply’ in Setswana) was the same entity as the Greek/Hebrew god ‘Ad-on’ (‘add’ means multiply in English, and it has the same root as ata). In fact ‘Adonai’ (Hebrew) and ‘Adonis’ (Greek) differed only in the appendage ai/is but both mean ‘multiplying (fertile) lord’. Just to rub it in, you may google the meaning of the Sumerian god’s name ‘Su-en’. It means ‘multiplying (fertile) lord’! In Hebrew, he was thus called ‘Sinai’, after whom the ‘sacred’ Canaanite area was eponymously named (see Joshua 15:1). We are indeed talking about a single god here!

Now, when Batswana talk of time immemorial, they say “go tswa go Loê” (literally: “since the time of Loê”). ‘Loê’ – now commonly spelt ‘Lowe’ – I have determined, is not a person but a bygone astrological age so catastrophic that everything had to begin afresh. This occurred in the so-called Age of the Lion (Leo: 10800 to 8640 BC). This 2,160-year ‘astrological period’ is actually properly scientific: a result of the astronomical ‘Precession of the Equinoxes’ caused by the Earth’s very slow wobble on its axis. ‘Loê’, therefore, is a linguistic metathesis of ‘Leo’ (whereby syllables are transposed usually as a result of ‘lexical borrowing’). In short, we borrowed ‘Leo’ (Indo-European) though we had the proto-term le-one.

 So why did things have to begin anew in that age? In my upcoming book – provisionally titled A New Harmonized Biblical and Secular Chronology – I was able to confirm and add value to the growing intuition that the Great Flood of Noah (Genesis 6-7) actually occurred in 10983 BC: towards the end of the Age of the Virgin (Virgo: 12960 to 10800 BC). But the catastrophic shifts in tectonic plates and the giant tsunamis it generated so utterly devastated our planet that only at the dawn of the new Age of the Lion (10 800 – 8640 BC) could the process of reclaiming land and rebuilding afresh begin in earnest. If there was no Flood, and given that mankind has been around for millions of years, the human population would be in trillions and not billions by now. All this must have registered deeply in the minds of our ancestors which is why Leo/Loê is associated with ‘a great beginning’ from which we can trace our ‘foremost’ ancestor (the biblical Ham?). Where does the term ‘tau’ itself come from? Tau is Greek for the letter ‘T’. In navigation, it signifies a T-junction – where one must take a different direction or reach a dead-end. The top of the ‘T’ also signifies the horns of a bull, hence its Greek name ‘Taurus’. 

The Sumerian Kings List shows that Obal-Utu (or ‘Ubar-Tutu’ as commonly spelt) was the ruling ‘god-king’ at the time of the Flood, and he ruled at the capital city of Shurupak. “Obal”, I have uniquely determined, is a metathesis of ‘Abol’, and this in turn is a corruption of the name ‘Apollo’, which in turn is a corruption of ‘Apollyon’.  Now, ‘apo-lyon’ is ‘before/near-to Leo’ in Greek, which simply confirms that this king reigned near to, or before, Leo commenced. But the Greek term ‘apo’ does not quite capture its primordial meaning quite as well as Setswana. Apo, Setswana reveals, means “uncover, undress”, as in apola. What this means is that the traumatised god-king refused the chance to continue his reign into the next period, Leo (indeed ‘gods’, I reveal time and again, were mere flesh-and-blood beings of super-advanced technology that they used to awe everyone else). In short, he ‘abandoned’ Leo.

Can we be sure that Abl-Utu was the same entity as Apollo? Greek legend concurs that Apollo had a sister-twin named ‘Artemis’ – the ‘virgin’ after who Virgo was dedicated. If so, why is the name Utu appended? In Sumerian legend, Utu and Inanna were boy-girl twins. In fact, a strict custom of the Pantheon of “Twelve Gods” was that they should take turns to rule for 2160 years – the length of an astrological age – and the twins even ruled together as the Gemini (6480 to 4320 BC). The name ‘utu’ means ‘extreme’, or ‘outward’ – i.e. ‘like the ears’ – which is why utwa (Setswana) and audi (Latin) relate to ‘hearing’ and also sound the same, and why in English they also relate to ‘out(ward)’. Apollo’s behaviour was evidently often extreme. In fact, a-polo-utu was a rude Sumerian/Setswana double-entendre  meaning ‘he of the extreme phallus’ and it referred to the many nude Greek and Roman sculptures in which he showed off his manhood! His other Sumerian name ‘Shamash’ (Shem-ish: ‘e-se-shem’ in Setswana syntax) also meant ‘it is rocket-like’... We would stop taking things so seriously if we but understood John’s Revelation 9:11. An angel/god called AB.ADON or ‘Abaddon’ i.e. ‘whose father (abba: ref Mark 14:36) is Adon(ai)/ Sinai’  was also called ‘Apollyon’ in Greek…

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