The Soleb (Sulb) temple, located on the left bank of the Nile just south of the Third Cataract, was built around 1400 BC by Pharaoh Amenhotep III (18th Dynasty). Amara West was the seat of the Egyptian administration of upper Nubia or Kush from the reign of Seti I (1306-1290 BC) onwards. The section of the Amara West topographical list which contains the reference to “the land of the Shasu of Yahweh" was copied from the earlier list at Soleb.
Soleb was a Horite "enclave" as were many other temples of the Upper Nile. Egyptologists recognize that the temples at Nekhen and Soleb served as the pattern for later temples. Both temples were dedicated to Ra and Horus, and their royal priests were devotees of Horus. Thus, they are called "Horites" in the Bible.
across the ancient world. Genesis 36 speaks of the clans of Seir the Horite who were living in Edom.
priest and the priest Jethro was likely his brother-in-law. We should not be surprised that YHWH is associated with Moses. Moses and his family were Horites. This has been confirmed through analysis of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Moses' father, which is distinctively Horite.
The Divine Name is also found at the Almaqah temple in the Ethiopian Highlands. This dates between the 8th and 6th centuries BC and was constructed on the ruins of an earlier Nubian structure. The sacrificial altar found at Almaqah bears a 7th century BC inscription with the name of Yeha (YH). As this was a mountain shrine with an elevation well above the Nile floodplain there is no
w as in the tetragrammaton.
The
w was a symbol for the Nile River.
The Horites were a
caste of ruler-priests who were known in the ancient world to be concerned with ritual purity, sobriety and religious devotion.
They were shepherds who sacrificed animals from their own flocks. They were not polytheistic. They believed in a single Creator whose son was Horus (HR), and they spoke of the Father and Son as equals.
As for the designation "I am" this was how Horus describes himself in the Coffin texts (passage 148):
"I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of
him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the
gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient
bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the
powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have
done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am
unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father
Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of 'Red Cloak'." (Myth and
Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)
Here we find the words of Psalm 110:1, from David.
The LORD says to my Lord:
"Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your
feet."
The Horites believed that the
sun inseminated the earth. As it rose and swelled in strength it generated life and health on earth. The Creator appointed His servants by the overshadowing of the sun. Those many of the names of the Horite rulers begin with the solar symbol Y. They also expected a woman of their ruler-priest lines to be overshadowed and to conceive the "Seed" of God (Gen. 3:15). She was called Hathor-Meri and she is shown on ancient Nilotic monuments crowned with the long horns of a cow in which the sun rests.
Hathor was the patroness of the miners at Timna, the site of the world's oldest copper mines. A temple dedicated to
Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timna by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.
The smelting works, slag, and flints at Timna were
found to be identical to those discovered near Beersheba where
Abraham spent his last days. The metal workers of Timna and the metal workers of Beersheba were kin and the patroness of their mining and smelting operations was the virgin mother of Horus who was worshiped by the Horites. In other words, these were Horite metal workers. Rothenberg concluded that the peoples living in the area were "partners not only in the work but in the worship of Hathor." (Rothenberg,
Timna, p. 183)
The Horite Hebrew (and the Sethite Hebrew) believed that Horus was born at the winter solstice because from that day forward the Sun grows in strength. There may have been an Egyptian ritual that involved placing a male baby before the image of Hathor after which the priests offered gifts before the "divine son."
Solar symbolism is found also in relationship to the death and resurrection of Horus. The Horite priests led the people in a 2-day fast to mourn Horus’ death at the hands of his brother. At dawn on the third day, they put away their mourning clothes and dressed for the feasting that took place after seed was sown in the fields with prayers led by the priests. The seed symbolized new life. Some believe that Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of Horite Hebrew expectation when, in speaking of the manner
of his death, he said, “unless a seed falls into the ground and dies” it cannot give life. (John 12:24)
YHWH is not a Name
Among the Gun of West Africa "
Yihwe" or "Yehwe" simply means God. It is likely that YHWH is not a name as much as it is a description about the High God who is/exists. This explains why, when Moses asked the name of the God who sent him, was told to say "I AM" sent me.
Likewise in John 8, when the Jews called Abraham their father, Jesus said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.”
“Then the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was I AM.”
The Y could be symbolic of the One who rules over all things. The Y indicates the Creator as universal ruler who appoints His earthly representatives. This Y is a sun cradle and designates many Biblical ruler: Yishmael, Yitzak, Yacob, Yosef, Yetro, Yeshua,
Yaqtan, Yishbak, and Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah). It appears that the Y speaks of divine appointment to rule or prophesy.
The two H's could represent
Horus of the Twin Horizons. In fact, the words "horizon" and "hour" are derived from the name Horus. He rides Ra's solar boat and makes his daily circuit from east to west, swelling each morning on the eastern horizon. The Horite Hebrew were also known as Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew) and Abru in Akkadian. These words are related to the Arabic
yakburu, meaning “he is getting big” and to the intensive active prefix:
yukabbiru, meaning "he is enlarging." This is a reference to the morning ritual of Horite priests who greeted the rising sun in their temples, offered prayers, and watched as the sun expanded across the horizon.
The Victory Tablet of Amenhotep III describes Horus as “The Good God, Golden [Horus], Shining in the chariot, like the rising of the sun; great in strength, strong in might…” (Tablet of Victory of Amenhotep III, J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, p. 854).
The W represents the Nile River, especially between the First and the Second Cataracts.
This region was called WaWaT. A sacred temporal and spatial center for the Nilotic Horites occurred daily when the sun rested directly over the Nile. The Egyptian word for the sun at its peak is
wbn.
Bn refers to pillars and the
w refers to the Nile. Psalm 29:10 describes “Yahweh who sat as king upon the flood; He is king forever.” Malachi 4:2 uses similar language: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell] with healing in its wings.”
The
swelling of the sun speaks of God's power to generate life and health.
Taking all the evidence together, it becomes clear that the original context of YHWH is Nilotic and that each glyph presents another feature of the God of the Horite Hebrew. For Abraham, this was a received tradition with a long history going back to his earliest Nilo-Saharan ancestors. They are discussed in my paper "
Genesis in Anthropological Perspective."
