Earth...ancestral divinities ancestors...death..,to die.
"Human intelligence normally strives to understand how all this came to be. Frequently, a demiurge , a creator, is imagined at the beginning of beginnings, at the very origins of the universe. Creation, or the coming into being of the world, including all components of the universe, is supposed to be the work of that demiurge . This is the constant postulate in all the world's mythologies, save one.
"The exceptional vision comes from Egypt. Unlike all other mythologies, Egyptian mythology came up with the concept of a universe preceding the present universe, a different universe that existed before the demiurge and all its creation. Here the mind, liberated from orthodox approaches to issues of genesis and origin, enters a realm with no questionable premises. What is posited is a kind of 'matter.' Yet it has no thematic form. It is absolute in its sovereignty, before it becomes involved, through the agency of the demiurge , in a process of becoming. The concept was of a sort of spatial medium antedating space and time, beyond time and space. All perceptible reality would, in the future be projected from this originating 'medium ' within it. The result of that activity would be the generation of the universe as we know it now, the reality explored and exploited by human ingenuity...
"Before generation and corruption, then, there was ungenerated, uncreated reality, that which was neither born nor made. To that substratum without form or shape, an amorphous reality, the ancient Egyptians gave the name, 'Nwn.'...
"Egyptian thinkers posited a state of matter before God and all his creation. Better still, God the artificer and creator himself emerged from this primal matter, itself 'uncreated .' The ancient Egyptians posited uncreated reality before God the demiurge . St. Augustine posited con-created matter, created by God at the same time as the other creatures. Between the two conceptions, that of uncreated matter is more materialistic than that of con-created matter.
"Around 3,000 BC, with Menes, all at once, was born the pharaonic institution that unified Egypt from South to North, a coherent organization for channeling and harnessing the waters of the Nile through systematic irrigation, accompanied by a writing system useful for regulating ceremonies and rituals, setting the calendar, and communicating the pharaoh's messages across great distances. All at once, too, Egypt created a set of impressive architectural constructions--the step pyramid with its prodigious complexity. Thus Egypt accomplished the leap from unbaked bricks and wood to chiseled stone.
Again in the Old Kingdom, and just as rapidly, emerged the first philosophy. It was as vigorous as the geometry of the pyramids, precise as pharaonic ritual. Here, right from the beginning, was a dynamic system all complete, astonishing in the radical sharpness of its vision. At the beginning of what is, from our present perspective , the result of a creative effort worthy of a demiurge , there was uncreated reality.
P.37-41, "African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780 BC-330BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)
Friday, June 10, 2016
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY by Theophile Obenga, excerpt....
"The present universe, that is to say, the Totality of all that exists, encompasses everything in the world, in nature, the abode of the dead, ...the sky above,...the inhabitable world, or ...to, humans of the planet 
Earth...ancestral divinities ancestors...death..,to die.
"Human intelligence normally strives to understand how all this came to be. Frequently, a demiurge , a creator, is imagined at the beginning of beginnings, at the very origins of the universe. Creation, or the coming into being of the world, including all components of the universe, is supposed to be the work of that demiurge . This is the constant postulate in all the world's mythologies, save one.
"The exceptional vision comes from Egypt. Unlike all other mythologies, Egyptian mythology came up with the concept of a universe preceding the present universe, a different universe that existed before the demiurge and all its creation. Here the mind, liberated from orthodox approaches to issues of genesis and origin, enters a realm with no questionable premises. What is posited is a kind of 'matter.' Yet it has no thematic form. It is absolute in its sovereignty, before it becomes involved, through the agency of the demiurge , in a process of becoming. The concept was of a sort of spatial medium antedating space and time, beyond time and space. All perceptible reality would, in the future be projected from this originating 'medium ' within it. The result of that activity would be the generation of the universe as we know it now, the reality explored and exploited by human ingenuity...
"Before generation and corruption, then, there was ungenerated, uncreated reality, that which was neither born nor made. To that substratum without form or shape, an amorphous reality, the ancient Egyptians gave the name, 'Nwn.'...
"Egyptian thinkers posited a state of matter before God and all his creation. Better still, God the artificer and creator himself emerged from this primal matter, itself 'uncreated .' The ancient Egyptians posited uncreated reality before God the demiurge . St. Augustine posited con-created matter, created by God at the same time as the other creatures. Between the two conceptions, that of uncreated matter is more materialistic than that of con-created matter.
"Around 3,000 BC, with Menes, all at once, was born the pharaonic institution that unified Egypt from South to North, a coherent organization for channeling and harnessing the waters of the Nile through systematic irrigation, accompanied by a writing system useful for regulating ceremonies and rituals, setting the calendar, and communicating the pharaoh's messages across great distances. All at once, too, Egypt created a set of impressive architectural constructions--the step pyramid with its prodigious complexity. Thus Egypt accomplished the leap from unbaked bricks and wood to chiseled stone.
Again in the Old Kingdom, and just as rapidly, emerged the first philosophy. It was as vigorous as the geometry of the pyramids, precise as pharaonic ritual. Here, right from the beginning, was a dynamic system all complete, astonishing in the radical sharpness of its vision. At the beginning of what is, from our present perspective , the result of a creative effort worthy of a demiurge , there was uncreated reality.
P.37-41, "African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780 BC-330BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)
Earth...ancestral divinities ancestors...death..,to die.
"Human intelligence normally strives to understand how all this came to be. Frequently, a demiurge , a creator, is imagined at the beginning of beginnings, at the very origins of the universe. Creation, or the coming into being of the world, including all components of the universe, is supposed to be the work of that demiurge . This is the constant postulate in all the world's mythologies, save one.
"The exceptional vision comes from Egypt. Unlike all other mythologies, Egyptian mythology came up with the concept of a universe preceding the present universe, a different universe that existed before the demiurge and all its creation. Here the mind, liberated from orthodox approaches to issues of genesis and origin, enters a realm with no questionable premises. What is posited is a kind of 'matter.' Yet it has no thematic form. It is absolute in its sovereignty, before it becomes involved, through the agency of the demiurge , in a process of becoming. The concept was of a sort of spatial medium antedating space and time, beyond time and space. All perceptible reality would, in the future be projected from this originating 'medium ' within it. The result of that activity would be the generation of the universe as we know it now, the reality explored and exploited by human ingenuity...
"Before generation and corruption, then, there was ungenerated, uncreated reality, that which was neither born nor made. To that substratum without form or shape, an amorphous reality, the ancient Egyptians gave the name, 'Nwn.'...
"Egyptian thinkers posited a state of matter before God and all his creation. Better still, God the artificer and creator himself emerged from this primal matter, itself 'uncreated .' The ancient Egyptians posited uncreated reality before God the demiurge . St. Augustine posited con-created matter, created by God at the same time as the other creatures. Between the two conceptions, that of uncreated matter is more materialistic than that of con-created matter.
"Around 3,000 BC, with Menes, all at once, was born the pharaonic institution that unified Egypt from South to North, a coherent organization for channeling and harnessing the waters of the Nile through systematic irrigation, accompanied by a writing system useful for regulating ceremonies and rituals, setting the calendar, and communicating the pharaoh's messages across great distances. All at once, too, Egypt created a set of impressive architectural constructions--the step pyramid with its prodigious complexity. Thus Egypt accomplished the leap from unbaked bricks and wood to chiseled stone.
Again in the Old Kingdom, and just as rapidly, emerged the first philosophy. It was as vigorous as the geometry of the pyramids, precise as pharaonic ritual. Here, right from the beginning, was a dynamic system all complete, astonishing in the radical sharpness of its vision. At the beginning of what is, from our present perspective , the result of a creative effort worthy of a demiurge , there was uncreated reality.
P.37-41, "African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780 BC-330BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)
