Iwen sa Keme Nu

[Dawn2Earth]

Kemetian Hues

'Iwen' was considered an integral part of an item's or person's nature in Ancient Egypt, and the term could interchangeably mean color, appearance, character, being, or nature. Items with similar color were believed to have similar properties.

Colors were often paired: silver and gold were considered complementary colors (i.e. they formed a duality of opposites just like the sun and moon). Red complemented white (think of the double crown Ancient Egypt), and green and black represented different aspects of the process of regeneration. Where a procession of figures is depicted, the skin tones often alternate between light and dark ochre.

Black (Ancient Egyptian name 'kem') was the name for the nation: 'Km.t [nw.t]' – Black [civilization]. Kem is in the name Chemistry, which Kemetians were the inventors of and Kemetians were major Chemists. Black object to Kemetians was akin to the end of a light trail (information trail / reflective trail) - as opposed to further reflection - and Kemetians knew all about reflection through the use of mirrors. Black to them was whole, was start and finish: it was the absorbtion (extent:end) of light allowing (start:begin) new, more workable, or more pertinent light to shine in the former lights place: for instance in the daytime sky you could tell the time of day (sun dile), but not the season of the year as stars are invisible because of the sky's babyblue light interference. So, not being just a beginning from darkness, it was at the beggining of the new light (next level) and end or extent of the old (previous page). So it is both like the widdling down of theories, it is their completion, and this could either be the next level that is complete and new unified theory, or the reduction back to the old theory if the new ones fail.Kem has a secondary meaning: complete or ultimate. Kemetian Black was associated with fertility as fertility god Min was depicted as jet black.

White (Ancient Egyptian name 'hedj') was the color of projection. White light is the reflection of all of the colors. White was associated with sacredness and cleanliness. Tools, sacred objects, and even priests' sandals were white for this reason. Clothing, which was often just undyed linen, was usually depicted as white. As were people's ghosts (projections) travelling through the underworld / afterlife (duat) in hopes to of being accepted into the next life.

Silver (also known by the name 'hedj', but written with the determinative for (reflective) precious metal) represented the color of the sun at dawn, and the moon, and stars. Silver was a rarer metal than gold in Ancient Egypt and held a greater value.



(The Nile River Valley pictured above played a vital role in the developement of Dynastic Egypt.)

Green (Ancient Egyptian name 'wahdj') was the color of fresh growth, vegetation, new life (and so indirectly attached with resurrection). The hieroglyph for green is a papyrus stem and frond.

Green was the color of the 'Eye of Horus', or 'Wedjat', which had healing and protective powers, and so the color also represented well-being. To do 'green things' was to do behave in a positive, life affirming manner.

When written with the determinative for minerals (three grains of sand) 'wahdj' becomes the word for malachite, a color which represented joy.

As with blue, the Ancient Egyptians could also manufacture a green pigment – verdigris (Ancient Egyptian name 'hes-byah' – which actually means copper or bronze dross (rust). Unfortunately, verdigris reacts with sulphides, such as the yellow pigment orpiment, and turns black. (Mediaeval artists would use a special glaze over the top of verdigris to protect it.)

Turquoise (Ancient Egyptian name 'mefkhat'), a particularly valued green-blue stone from the Sinai, also represented joy, as well as the color of the sun's rays at dawn. Through the deity Hathor, the Lady of Turquoise, who controlled the destiny of new-born babies, it can be considered a color of promise and foretelling.

Blue (Ancient Egyptian name 'irtyu') was the color of the heavens, the dominion of the gods, as well as the color of water, the yearly inundation, and the primeval flood. Like the blue seas, the skies were subject to change at any moment, and so blue represents change. Although Ancient Egyptians favored semi-precious stones such as azurite (Ancient Egyptian name 'tefer') and lapis lazuli (Ancient Egyptian name 'khesbedj', imported at great cost across the Sinai Desert) for jewelery and inlay, technology was advanced enough to produce the world's first synthetic pigment, known since medieval times as Egyptian blue. Depending on the degree to which the pigment Egyptian blue was ground, the color could vary from a rich, coarse dark blue to a pale, ethereal blue.

Blue was used for the hair of gods (specifically lapis lazuli, or the darkest of Egyptian blues) and for the face of the god Amun – a practice which was extended to those Pharaohs associated with him. Hair is associated with someone's appearance (figure or image) while the same word for face was used for their 'skin', 'flesh' and 'body' -- it was their naked essence.



[glow=purple,2,300]Yellow (Ancient Egyptian name 'khenet')[/glow] was the color of the sun and, along with gold, represented something unchanging. As with blue and green, the Ancient Egyptians produced a synthetic yellow – lead antimonite – its Ancient Egyptian name, however, is unknown.

When looking at Ancient Egyptian art today it can be difficult to distinguish between lead antimonite, (which is a pale yellow), lead white (which is very slightly yellow but can darken over time) and orpiment (a relatively strong yellow which fades in direct sunlight). This has lead some art historians to believe white and yellow were interchangeable.

Gold (Ancient Egyptian name 'newb') represented the flesh of the gods and was used for anything which was considered eternal or indestructible. (Gold was used on a sarcophagus, for example, because the pharaoh had become a god.) Whilst gold leaf could be used on sculpture, yellow or reddish-yellows were used in paintings for the skin of gods. (Note that some gods were also painted with blue, green, or black skin.)

[glow=blue,2,300]Realgar[/glow], which we consider to be an orange color today, would have been classed as yellow. (Even in Europe the term orange didn't come into use until the fruit arrived in Europe from China in medieval times – even Cennini writing in the 15th century describes it as a yellow!)

Red (Ancient Egyptian name 'deshr') represented reduction. It was associated with protection, but also with destruction, chaos and disorder. Red was the color of the desert (Ancient Egyptian name 'deshret') because the desert was a pit of a seemingly endless insatiable appetite. One of the principal red pigments, red ochre, was obtained from the desert. (The hieroglyph for red is the hermit ibis, a bird which, unlike the other ibis of Egypt, lives in dry areas and eats insects and small creatures.)

Red was also the color of destructive fire and fury, and was used to represent something dangerous.

Through its relation to the desert, red became the color of the god Seth, the traditional god of chaos, and was associated with death – the desert was a place where people were exiled or sent to work in mines. The desert was also regarded as the entrance to the underworld where the red sun (dawn) disappeared each night.

As chaos, red was considered the opposite to the color white. It was also the opposite of green and black.

However, this most potent of all colors in Ancient Egypt, was also a color of life and protection – derived from the color of blood and the life-supporting power of fire. Ra was also depicted as red on occasion. It was therefore commonly used for protective amulets.

More Alternative Colors..

Purity of colour was important to Ancient Egyptians and the artist would usually complete everything in one color before moving on to the next. Paintings would be finished off with fine brushwork to outline the work and add limited interior detail.

The degree to which Ancient Egyptian artists and craftsmen mixed colors varies according to dynasty. But even at its most creative, color mixing was not widely spread. Unlike today's pigments which give consistent results, several of those available to Ancient Egyptian artists could react chemically with each other, for example lead white when mixed with orpiment (yellow) actually produces black.

[source]

[Dawn2Earth]

Heru-ur Heru the elder, deification of vision, was given the appellation Kem Wer meaning black ancient one or black great one. As was his father Ausar and his mother Auset. These were three of Kemet's heroes, the three deities it had who represented good will and were human. Ausar ruled the Kingdom and rules and judges in the life to come and Auset, a master at secret magical spells, initially rules the Kingdom in his absence until the birth of Heru (the full falcon or other times just hawk-headed character who shows up black with the Sun's rays beaming behind him, and who soars over all with clear vision).

Many deities get depicted as jet black, one of them being Min, god of fertility, who is sometimes portrayed as an impish statue and always has a gigantic erect penis, which all makes the classic "black is equivalent to death in Egyptian symbols" notion hilarious. The death of what? His girl's female private parts. Like for instance there is this dual-depiction engraving of King Tut against a gold background where on one side he where's a black crown on a face that is dark brown and in mirror side he wheres a gold crown and has the same color skin -- the black reborn side was initially assumed to be the deceased (gold) side. While people tend to focus on the Jackal (which are not even black) deity Yinepu (Anubis), the beetle deity Khepera, "creator" deity, is also depicted with a black creature. Scarabs were thought to be self-creating, self generating creatures. With the beetle you get life, even self-creation, from dead matter. Further, to my knowledge, Yinepu didn't get the "great black one" appellation that Ausar, Auset, and Heru received.

I recall two or three African posters telling us they heard relatives say some things about red demons and a black God or black spirits. In fact:



Black God, The Afroasiatic Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Religions - Julian Baldick

I believe the book shown above goes into that a bit, as that influenced the title:

In his latest provocative book, Julian Baldick argues that just as there is a common Afroasiatic language family, so too there is a common Afroasiatic family of religions. There is an inner logic to be found in myths, folk-tales, rituals, customs and beliefs as far apart as Yemen and Nigeria, which go back to an ancient past shared by the Bible and the pharaohs. Using the methods of comparative mythology, the author sifts through the work of an array of scholars - including anthropologists, religious historians, archaeologists and classical Greek writers and contemporary comments on them by professional Egyptologists - to build his picture of the Afroasiatic heritage, and how much of it is still with us in modern Western thought.

We know the concept of "red devil" goes back to Kemet and that it's still a theme in Africa today. In modern times though there's the credit jargon of "in the black" (covered costs) versus "in the red" (think opposite green: owing, loosing money). This is why the black in "Black Friday" has two meanings, one economic.

One occurrence if this conception of black in Scripture jumps to mind for me. Of "The Four Horseman" there is this CLEARLY economic black horse mentioned in Revelations, whose rider bears a scale weighing in the balance: "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." I'm not going to post the quote here, but the horse that carries "death" is the pale horse, you can go look it up for yourselves. Interestingly, even in ancient Egypt ghosts (projections) of people were pale and people who had not yet been destroyed or admitted into the afterlife in the underworld were painted with "white".



The most common explanation of Kemetian reverence for the color black, - a colour (to them) which i would paint neither as wholly positive nor wholly negative and which conveyed strength and finality - is still the Nile Valley itself and its rich dark hue due to its inundation silt compared to the desert which gives a glare with a red tint. And they did name their Nation Km.t -- "black". However, the term Km.t (black) in reference to the Egyptian state itself was coupled with a determinant: Nw.t. The determinant glyph, Nw.t, an encircled vertical and horizontal intersection, was with place name used to denote any places that were "civilized" as opposed to "Khst" and "Ta" for purely geographic names of regions (pieces of earth). Infact Nw.t (same word for city, civilization, community or town) means "sky" and "night", likely the projection.

A sky goddess whose name is of the same spelling: Nut:



Nut, above, pictured as black and holding forms of Ra (ram headed man, sun disk, beetle).

The sky goddess, most times i've seen her, is depicted as gold, dark blue colored spangled with stars, or white. The Sky (projection) was a symbol of prospect. The Sky back then was a prospect, you could tell the seasons by the stars and the Sky held the celestial bodies in place and kepts earth in balance and orbit. She was mentioned in one text as being asked to cover someone. Whatever the projection (provided you worked it out correctly ( white)), there is the issue of what the outlook on that is (can you get ahead or not) depending on what you can materialize (black).



Black entails resolute and was associated with objectivity and completion. This does not place it as being seen as opposed to change, nor for it, necessarily, more as both its conduit and antidote. Here are a series of projections brought to completion: You could slack off in running your business (or running anything) but then you must answer to your financier or boss, and the business as a whole must answer to the folk that patronize it. One can harass and annoy the nest but, to complete the story, the wasps may swarm and you may want to be prepared for that. And unlike the bees and other cool animals, we can't rely on our wings and stingers and such but as a plus we don't need 'em. Could we fly, move fast as hell and process things faster to where we view the world in slow motion like feeble flies and other animals can, we would probably be dumb as rocks. We are, however, relying a lot on honey bees for food indirectly: we get a rather large fraction of our food as a result of honeybee pollination which is why we're so concerned with their dying population. Right now we face another dilemma -- fast transportation is needed in a developing world but its greenhouse effect could quicken global warming the implications for which could lead to the gradual desertion of gas we now rely on and gas companies have a lot of leverage in the form of moulah with which to use to attempt to keep the current system in place. Scientists disagree over what exactly is causing the process we call global warming, whether it's exists or is even a problem, but whatever the case global warming seems to be linked to ending Saharan droughts and greening the desert and Scientists also say we are due for another Ice Age any day now. Perhaps all of this explains unpredictable weather? We can clear land to make room for human settlements or recreational areas but it may have been good farm land. If it was a desolate already then that was a positive. Anyway it is because of things like this that having systems is important. Systems are like plants we can tend to and take care of that bare fruit. In a lot of cases though, our problem is when we get over excited for the delicacies to come too soon.



Back to Kemet:

The "Suten" - the ancient egyptian term for ruler (from which Middle Eastern words such as Sultan and Sudan derive) - was seen as being given to the people as a living Heru a manifestation of Ra in the flesh. Ancient Kemet came into being after it was *unified* under a ruler they could physically see and know. We tend to look out ourselves as way above that (Regality) now a days but there can gain similar amounts of power - in who has the resources, money, etc. And this has likely always been the case, so in the past having a unified government under a monarch might seem a better option to you compared to an other option of people not knowing who their ruler is, or rulers are, if clicks of men rule. Another thing is the Pharaoh had advisors, and at times his power may have been checked by the Cult of Question (Cult of Amen, "the hidden"). There are wild theories though that the nation was actually ruled by astrology / the planets and stuff.

[Dawn2Earth]

Ausar is linked by Greeks to Greek god Dionysus.

In Greek mythos Dionysus "the god who comes" having come from a foreign land whether he is Asiatic or Ethiopian seems to be inherent to what he is.

In Kemetian culture Ausar, first ancient Egyptian as founder and first King of the ancient Egyptian Kingdom, ushered people into then new things like husbandry and law. When he was finished he introduced these greener pastures to other[/b] lands, leaving Kemet (ancient "Egypt") for a while. Ausar is supposed to be the key of getting into the paradise afterlife of the Elysian Field of Reeds.

While he is indeed titled Kem Wer and even painted as such, i.e. with jet black skin still dressed in white garment, he also is depicted with green skin as shown above. In this coloring he involved with growth. Not simple change this growth orientation has to do with what is to come of things. Dionysus is said to be the god of Epiphany, interestingly.
















There are a slew of science fiction films that have been released since like the sixties that play at least in part on themes like these about self the relating Epiphany and Alien concepts..

[Dawn2Earth]

(style)

Color of the skies, a trademark of which is that things often are moving through them and what happens in them can be un-predictable. Color of change.

In some depictions you may have seen Pharaohs whose eyes were not elsewhere painted as blue before painted with blue eyes. Maybe it conveys his seeing change.



(cool blue attire, quality composition photograph)

[Dawn2Earth]

Bread and Red Wine



Wine, Red Demons, and the Clean White Linens of Africans and Hebrews

As you might notice in the image currently at the top of the page on this website, we see Ausar sitting on his throne garbed in white -- which i would not say equates to the same thing as purity which is connoted by clarity/invisibility.

Other culturally related mentionings of the white dress are in the Scriptural Tanakh and in the Obatala faith.

In the latter West-African example we have i believe "Obatala, Lord of the White Cloth" and in the former, in the book of Revelations we have the Saints clothed in "linen, white and clean" as well as "the armies which were in heaven" wearing the same sitting upon white horses following Jesus sitting upon the same but robed in crimson "wearing a vesture dipped in blood".



Another instance of the complementary colors white and red are in the White Crown and Red Crown of Dynastic Kemet. Given the state's origins and acceptance of hegemony from folks living up-river and juxtaposing this with the ferocity of some of the invasions and repulsions in the opposite direction the placement of the Crowns makes sense. The White would be indicative of naturalness and simplicity of interaction with Southerners and the Northern Red of the empire's view of relations with non-Nile Valley folks in the other direction, with foreign cultures: all about red. And as the article saysred both here and in general is not simply attached to destruction but also to the state's protection and survival. Survival connotes something that is to be taken care of; red, a concern and what swallows it up. This relates well with things like national security, concern for ecology, concern over what foreign elements were to be absorbed (consumed) verses repulsed or reformed (destroyed) (on their own turf since most of the time Kemet was not imperial). The reason for this being that Kemetians, like other African cultures, attached red to mortality, carnal matters and evile. Even today in the West people psychologically associate red hues with food - particularly with cravings for something sweet (think BBQ sauce; in nature, think berries and beans) - and many food, snack and beverage places have had red, maroon, or pink around because of this. Red is also used to engender sexual arousal (works on me) -- think short shorts, lipstick, rose petals and lingerie. Also, the mind sharpens and the adrenaline enhances at the sight of red. Obvious possible evolutionary reasons why could be the sight of blood or the sight of fire figure in a crucial situation. Today we see red and white in the form of financial aid and in the Red Cross.

Set, neter and ancestor to the reds after the Hyksos invasion and very violent expulsion (and they really did adopt him as their Deity) was, like a plethora of other deities, associated with destruction and protection [yawn] and even tried to arouse himself and plant his seed in Young Heru and in Auset - in a dude and in his brothers wife - and in the latter failure simply "came" on the ground. Also noteworthy about the Hyksos invasion may be the fact that Set was worshiped in the South - in fact his original seat of worship before their invasion, adoption, and his becoming demonized, lays near Kom Ombos i believe - and the fact that elements from that direction had actually assisted the Hyksos. Interestingly, there are depictions of folk located South of Egypt who were dark skinned and sported red hair. The Hyksos invasion is what probably sparked Kemet's incredibly fierce grand imperialism campaign Eastward into the Levantine-Arabian domain, Westward well into much of Europe, Northward near to Russia, and Southward (further) into Sudan -- according to legend.

Interestingly in the book of Revelations the white and clean linen donning Saints are contrasted with the daughter of Babylon - "that city" "the Great Whore of Babylon" (who the 7 headed Beast she sits on hates though its Kings love her and) - who's clothed in "fine linen" and scarlet a.k.a. Red and purple a.k.a. rare & expensive. She's explicitly involved with that which both of these colors connote: she murders, fornicates, lives deliciously, had delicacies merchants waxed rich thru, and has made all that had ships rich "by reason of her costliness" - Rev. 18:19. Interestingly other cities were "harlots" in other Scriptural books -- Egypt and Israel even. It would seem also that where Divinity is concerned here red is associated with fire, and where mortality is concerned it's associated with blood & drink, what with the fire from God coming down out of heaven, the wine-press Jesus treads, and all (wine associated with blood and evil and evil associated with becoming as grapes to eventually be picked away). Interesting to me because today you have folks that plain work things out naturally and pay no mind to dumb nonsense and you also have in this era of modernization folks who ingest, go through, and figure out the changing world.



Some times it's better to absorb things and not evade them. Eat your food. What if the earth was not to consume its rotting? It's like with certain fire adapted trees / plants whose cones take fire melting the resin to be able to open up and disperse the seeds within.

[Dawn2Earth]

hk