Deciphering the ancient names of animals (Part 1)

L M Leteane | Thursday March 24, 2016 11:23

No dictionary is presently able to trace the linguistic origins of the name: some say it is ‘probably Pidgin in origin’. But through Setswana, we can see that se-bola means ‘stripe-like’ (bola is ‘line’ in Tswana: the sound-change from l to r is well-known in linguistics e.g. in Shona ‘dollar’ is pronounced ‘dorrah’)! However, there is possibly a different etymology not related to ze-bola. A ‘zebu’ is a bovine (cow-like) animal rather than an equine (horse-like) animal. Thus, knowing that the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian term ‘On’ – One in Tswana – refers to the Lord (as I have divulged in detail in numerous articles), the ‘se-buI’ in ‘Zebulon’, the name of one of Jacob’s sons (Genesis xx:xx) may have the different meaning of ‘bull-like’,  thus implying that he was named after ‘Lord Zebul;. Now, we can easily trace this name to a Sumerian god known as Enlil (EN.L’ILLU: ‘Lord of the Illui (gods))’. He was reputed to be the ruling deity of the Age of the Bull (Taurus: 3786 to 2160 BC) and he frequently rode the airborne GU.DA.ANA (“Bull of the Sky”) as Sumerians remember him. Here, we get two interesting new terms for consideration: Taurus and GU as variations of ‘bull’.

 ‘Taurus’ (bull) comes from the Greek term ‘taura’ (or tauro) which I relate to the Setswana tern taolla or taollo (stretch/a stretching). How so? The proto-term au, as in ‘aura’, is a noun meaning ‘an extension of’. Thus, au-ra (au-ga in proto-Tswana) means ‘to become an extension of’ – the most common expression of this referring to a purportedly invisible halo of light surrounding (extending around) the head and being a projection of one’s inner thoughts or spiritual state. Indeed, ng-auga is a Setswana term meaning ‘rebel’, i.e. make one’s own ‘extension’ of an existing group. Greek letter Tau (T) has a horizontal stroke at the top which look like the horns of a bull (which horns ‘stretch out’ from the head), hence its association with the animal. Given this, we can now also understand why ‘nare’ (Setswana for ‘buffalo’) is, etymologically, deemed na-auri (bull-like) because of its thick horns.

 Now, the letter Tau has the added connotation of symbolizing a T-junction, a dead-end at which must choose a new direction: left or right. How did this symbolism come to be associated with a lion? (Every Motswana knows that tau means ‘lion’.) To understand this we have to go back to a time so ancient that it is shrouded in myth. According to Mesopotamian ‘mythology’ (Mesopotamia – whose languages were Sumerian and Akkadian (Babylonian) in what is now Iraq) – the catastrophic Great Flood of Noah (who Sumerians called ‘Utnapishtim’ and Babylonians ‘Atra-Hasis’) occurred in the Age of the Lion (Leo: 10800 to 8640 BC), just after what geologists know as the catastrophic end of the Ice Age when a precarious tilt of Earth on its axis caused the polar ice caps to slip and fall into lower latitudes, thus melting ice and shifting tectonic plates such that they generated massive tsunamis. Many people and animals were suddenly wiped out. It was indeed a ‘dead end’ where everything had to begin afresh, and a new direction taken. Now, evidently Setswana, dimly remembers this catastrophic Age of the Lion and the fact that it was a ‘tau’(a T-junction or dead-end): they had henceforth associated the two! However, when Batswana talk of ‘time immemorial’, they say “go tswa go Loê” (literally: “since the time of Loê”, though ‘Loê’ is now commonly spelt ‘Lowe’). What did our ancestors mean? I have determined that they referred not to a person but the cataclysmic age of Leo. In short, Loê is but a metathesis of Leo! (A metathesis is a language development whereby the order of syllables comes to be swapped around.) The term ‘leo’ itself, quite evidently, was originally ‘le-One’ (‘the king’: lyon in French) – a term befitting the ‘king of the jungle’! (We have already discussed, above that One refers to ‘the Lord’). Indeed tau, we saw, was not the original Setswana name for ‘lion’ but an ancient association with catastrophe. The original name for ‘lion’ was ‘podumo’. Thus, the village of Podumong in the Taung area of South Africa’s North West province is literally, ‘Place of the Lion’ as the ‘tau’ in ‘Taung’ also ably tells us. I have unbundled ‘podumo’ 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. Let us now unbundle another ancient name – ‘snake’ – associated with mankind’s early beginnings in Eden. Its Setswana name is ‘noga’ (noka in other Bantu dialects). We can thus relate ‘snake’ to se-noka. The term ‘serpent’ is based on the name of a ‘mythical’ lady named ‘Sarpanit’ or ‘Tsirpanit’. She was evidently skinny and tall (reasons for which I cannot go into for lack of space) and we thus know her in our own legends as ‘Mmantsiripane’. She angered the gods by ‘seducing’ a senior god Marduk, the son of EN.KI (Sumerian for ‘Lord of the Earth’), and since Enki was associated with the intertwining-snakes symbol that is now the universal symbol of medicine (see, for example, the UN’s WHO logo), the association was easy to make. Now, seeing that the Mesopotamian legends of Eden predate the Genesis account by more than 3,000 years, and in the Atra-Hasis legend it was Enki rather than Enlil (the biblical ‘God’) who rescued Noah from the Great Flood, it is not surprising that he was also called noha (a snake)!

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