Greetings Arara
Firstly, I never use Budge as my sole source when interpreting data from Egyptian. Secondly, although I know of some of his mishaps in interpretation, he is not one to just "make up glyphs." In Budge 909a he has Tcher and Tchera-t for "ancestress" a title of Isis and Nepththys. The tch is the bundle of flax glyph which in modern Egyptology has the "djr" sound. It corresponds nicely with the Bantu renderings below that has nchora/njora. Thirdly, We can verify a lot of Budge's "so-called" misinterpretations with African languages.
My rendering of Ntr to mean ancestors is precisely because that's what it means in Black African languages; along with divine, gods, etc. The totality of African cultures renders the same name for God, Ancestors and man the same.
Ntr "god" interpreted by Egyptologists
Noyte, Nute, Noute (Coptic)
Unteru (Gurma) - god
Untenu (Gurmantche) - god
Ntori (Fulani) - god
Naiteru (Masai) - god
Nture (Kwasio) - Sacred
Noro (Mombutu) - god
Ntora/Njora/Nchora (Kiswahili) - god
Ntoro/Nton (Akan) - spirit of patralineage
Anatara (Amarigna) - Pure
Ma-Toro (a-Zande) - god
Tre (Ewe) - clan spirit, fetiche)
adro (Lugbara) - guardian spirit
Adro (^^) - God
The guardian spirits, clan spirits are ancestors. A Ntr is equivalent to an Orisha of the Yoruba or an Abosom of the Akan. This is the same with the Niombo of the Kongo. As the Yoruba say
Eniyan ni i d orisa = "It is human beings who become Orisha."
This is the typical Black African cultural characteristic when it comes to the best of ancestral spirits: they become the forces of Nature. This is what happened with Sango and Oya of the Yoruba tradition. This practice is the exact same among the Egyptians. Highly respected people become Netchers and associated with certain forces of nature. Thus the blessed dead, now Ntrw, are ancestors.
Ntr "god" is the same as Ntr "natron" which is a cleansing agent. It is something that makes something "clean and pure." As shown above, Ntr also means "pure" and is also in reference to the "purity" of spirit. Only those human beings of "pure" heart make it to become the divine Ntrw after death.
The essence of Ntr is its association with purity. Thus in the a-Zande you have TORO "rain" which gives way to MA-TORO "God." We see this in Hebrew as MA-TAR "rain" and TAL "dew." In Hebrew you also have THR "be pure," and Amarigna ANATARA "pure." We can go all over Africa and the essence of rain (purity) is associated in character and in word with "God." The deeper implication or reference is the purity of the energy which is behind all living and seemingly non-living things. Thus the only thing you can reference to that is things like "water" thus NTR "natron" for cleansing and the n-t-r in Africa dealing with "purity."
We can verify this practice in proto Bantu with Guthrie and Meeusen who give *-dok- for "rain, drip." In proto-Bantu the *d often changes to -l-. This same root became MU-LUNGU "God (d > l, k > g). The so-called *Borean languages also attest to this root (d > t), which has global applications:
The connotation is to that which is imperishable, pure energy, spirit (that without form/matter). This is the inner essence of man. In the Akan Ntoro (spirit) and Nton (arch) distinction, the Nton ( r/l/n sound shift maintained) is metaphorically used to talk about one's "family" arch: in other words one's lineage; what ancestors bind us together. You are bound to a community by one's ancestral heritage: the spirit that flows through your blood.
I think therefore Budge is correct because it corresponds with the African reality. The old saying, 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness" is based on an old cultural historical fact. The Ntrw are ancestors. The Egyptian king's goal, in the pyramid texts and the Civwilu Mu Mukulu (prt m hrw) was to become a pure spirit. As Obenga notes in African Philosophy (2004:397):
Now, you have to ask yourself what makes more sense: land of the gods or land of the ancestors? Think about this first: African people do not think that spirits reside in one area. The whole earth and universe is covered with spirits. The Spirits are the causal agents of change in nature: pure consciousness/energy. If the whole earth is made up of "spirits/gods" what sense does "Land of the Gods," in reference to Punt, make? None at all. The whole earth is the "land of the gods." It doesn't fit into the African reality. Now, if a segment of the Egyptian population came from the horn and say "Land of the Ntrw" meaning "ancestors," that makes much more sense.
Plus, these areas were also called Ta AAkhu and the KU in the Black African languages mean "to die" or the "ancestors." KU or AKU is also Egyptian for "light." This again references the core essence (pure) reality in which the dead seek to rejoin and why it was sometimes symbolized as being one with the sun as Obenga noted above.
So in totality, the "land of the gods" doesn't make sense. What gods came from there? What other texts acknowledges that these "gods" came from Punt? Does Punt (Barentu in Eritrea - /w/ also pronounced as /r/) mean "land of the gods?"
Hello imhotep06,
I think one really has to be careful when referring to Budge's dictionary. The fact that a good deal of the material referred in his dictionary is not attested elsewhere should lead us to be more cautious about it. Not saying that some of what he wrote was not right, as showed by the example of the verb nHs "to mumble incantations" (from which is derived nHsj) which, although not attested elsewhere than in his own dictionary, can be reconstructed from external evidence... However I think one should stop playing the conspiracy card and using his dictionary as an undisputable reference. Also could you tell us more about this "tcher" word? If it's a generic name for ancestress, how come it is not marked by the feminine nominal suffix -t? And how would you explain the alternation nTr~Tr from a grammatical standpoint?
Arara