The Tuareg?

The Tuareg…

Is it coincidence, I wonder?

When the Bakhwa (Bushmen), residing in the Central-to-Northwest Districts of Botswana say “Tuare”, they mean “People”, and more specifically “their people”. I wonder if this suggests that there is a link between them and the Tuareg of North Africa.

This crossed my mind because the habitat of both peoples is quite similar – the Kalahari semi desert in Botswana and the Sahara desert in North Africa. Perhaps those who speak the language of either the Tuareg or the Bakhwa  or both can research further on the linkage.

BACK TO THE NARMER PALLET, TOP REGISTER OBVERSE SIDE…

I wrote that the register, in Ikalanga language, declares “BIGANI MIHOLO PASI; SHE WABO SHE, ZHISHUMBA GULU, TETSHI WENYU MENGWE, MALOBA HANGO MBILI DZAKA SENGA GUNGWA (nile) KA DZI HANGANYA KA BAKA KA-MABUNDE, WOYO!”

Which in Emglish translates to “Bow down your heads to touch the ground; Welcome Mengwe, King of Kings, the biggest lion, your master, the one who defeated the two lands that carry the Nile and united them into one Federation of MaBunde.”

I wish to add a detail that I had not noticed when I wrote the above. The official carrying a pair of sandals behind King Mengwe has an inscription which consists of flowers (MALUBA) and just below the flowers, a head (NHOLO, plural – MIHOLO). This changes the phrase “ the one who defeated the two lands” to the phrase “the one who defeated the heads of the two lands”. The Ikalanga language rendition becomes “…MALOBA MIHOLO E HANGO MBILI DZAKA SENGA GUNGWA (nile)…”

Kalanga speakers will have noticed by now that so far I have been using a dialect of Ikalanga that is spoken in South Western Zimbabwe, around Plumtree and (I believe) Dombodema. I have no proof that this represents the sole version of Ikalanga language that the ancient Egyptians spoke. In fact I am now in trouble due to this. In most versions of Kalanga, the “head of a land” or “king” is called “she”, while in the Plumtree version, they drop the “s” whenever it is followed by “h”.

   

While reading “An esoteric interpretation of the Narmer Pallette and the Narmer Macehead” by Dr. Douglass A. White, I learnt that the figure being smitten by “Narmer” with a mace, on the reverse side of the Pallette has an inscription “Wa Sha”. I also learnt that the HORUS-guided head above that figure represents the expression “Sha”. I think this proves that the Kalanga version spoken by Ancient Egyptians was not always the Plumtree version. The “Sha” in the above expressions is pronounced “Shay”, and written “She” in Kalanga, meaning  “king” or “head of a land”. Therefore the MAIN register on the reverse side of the Pallette, records that Mengwe is striking “SHE WA (BO)SHE”, meaning  “King of King(s)”. The King of Kings referred to here is undoubtedly King of Lower Egypt (Delta) as shown by the papyrus reeds, and HORUS.

Still on the reverse side, bottom register we see two figures running and stumbling. The left figure has an inscription of a wall, while the right figure has what at first appears to be a “knot of some kind”. In fact it is not a knot at all; it is “two raised arms clenching an axe and ready to strike”. This must be a hieroglyph for “ku rwa” meaning “to fight” in Shona language, or “ku gwa” in Kalanga, proper.  Shona language (spoken in Zimbabwe) is a dialect of Kalanga that developed among the soldiers who were deployed between the Southern Su-thu people, also known as “Barwa” and the Northern Kalangas proper. The bottom register therefore depicts the people south of the WALL (Shabaka stone) who were in the main Barwa/Basuthu running for dear life from General (Narmer)Mengwe/Meno.