{"id":472,"date":"2020-11-18T10:47:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T10:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kalenjin.co.ke\/?p=472"},"modified":"2020-11-18T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2020-11-18T13:19:50","slug":"kalenjin-another-lost-tribe-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/?p=472","title":{"rendered":"Kalenjin: Another lost tribe of Israel?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Kalenjin youth at a traditional ceremony. Photo\/Courtesy <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Philip Ochieng<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, in Kalenjin cosmology, the expanse of land that centers on the Mau forest was the “Promised Land,” then the Ogiek were their Canaanites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we read in Wanguhu Ng\u2019ang\u2019a\u2019s newly published book Communities of Kenya, the Ogiek were the natives of that land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kalenjin were later conquerors. Like the Israelites, who traveled northwards, the Kalenjin came southwards from Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No wonder the Ogiek remnants of the Ndorobo-Sirikwa cluster are beginning to pose what looks like a \u201cPalestinian problem\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kalenjin story is nearly identical in many other ways to that of ancient Israel. Why is it that certain central details of Kalenjin settlement in Kenya\u2019s Rift Valley have mythical counterparts in Israel\u2019s reported colonization of Canaan at the end of the 13th century BC?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does the Kalenjin epic claim a sudden exodus from Egypt, a wandering for long decades in the wilderness, the crossing of a river called \u201cJordan,\u201d a mass circumcision at Pisgah, capped with the conquest of Jericho, Bethel, Ai, Hazor and other cities of the Levantine natives?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more astonishing, how is it that, for these events, Kalenjin tradition uses terminology almost identical to that of Judah\u2019s King Josiah, his chief priest Hilkiah, their redactor Ezra and other masterminds of what Bible students call the Deuteronomistic History?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s Kalenjin equivalents of the Soferim \u2014 those who wrote and edited the Jewish Bible in the seventh and sixth centuries BC (just before, during and just after the Babylonian exile) \u2014 assert that the Kalenjin arrived in abrupt escape from Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They began to settle only after some 40 years of wandering in the \u201cwildernesses\u201d of Southern Sudan and northwestern Kenya and \u201cthe Mountain God\u201d (Elgon). Divested of the Bible\u2019s thick ethnic self-aggrandizing gloss, it is true that a certain Semitic tribe left Egypt abruptly after a period of imperialistic rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Known to historians as Hyksos and including the immediate family of a certain Y-aa-gub (\u201cJacob\u201d) \u2014 known in Kalenjin mythology as Yak-hober \u2014 this Semitic tribe renamed itself Ysro-el (\u201cIsrael\u201d) after their leader had dreamed of an encounter with the god El at a place thereafter called Beth-el or Bethel (\u201cHouse of El\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Out of Egypt, Ahmed Osman explains that the term Israel was derived from the Coptic god Asar-el, (a name that means \u201cOsiris is God\u201d or simply \u201cEl empowers\u201d) the chief god of the Nilo-Hamitic Copts, Edomites and Canaanites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Known in the Pentateuch as \u201cMoses,\u201d Amenhotep IV was the pharaoh who triggered so much religious unrest by revolutionarily imposing a monotheon called Aten \u2014 for which reason he changed his name to Akhenaten \u2014 and banned all other gods and goddesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egypt was electrified. But what archaeo-history now knows conflicts with what we read in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moses abdicated and fled not because he had killed an Egyptian and hidden him in the sand but only because the priests conspired to kill him on account of the Aten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, he went south to Nubia \u2014 his mother Tiye\u2019s maiden country. There, he married Tharbis, the black beauty whom Exodus calls Zipporah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After assuming the pseudonym \u201cMoses,\u201d he sneaked back into Egypt via Midian and gave his Aten religion to his former Israelites slaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In return for a promise to liberate them, they agreed to be recruited into an army which he then used to wage war on official Egypt to try to reclaim his crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he was routed and forced to flee once again, this time into Sinai\u2019s Shara Mountains \u2014 \u201cthe Mountain of God\u201d \u2014 in Edomite country, to give rise to the legend called Exodus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem we have is that it is the Jewish descendants of those Israelites who are writing that story and they are doing so after many centuries of oral tradition and with a great deal of ethnic self-glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pentateuch tells only the story of the small group that fled with Moses northwards. Historians now agree that the religious upheaval caused by Akhenaten-Moses occasioned \u201cexoduses\u201d in all other directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some fled to West Africa (perhaps including the remarkable Dogon of Mali, Akan of Ghana and Wolof of Senegal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some fled to Crete, Peloponnesus, Thessaly and Colchis (creating the legend of Jason\u2019s Quest for the Golden Fleece).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some fled towards the Red Sea (later to emerge in Ethiopia as the \u201cFalasha Jews\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we zero in on the Kalenjin, Luo, Maasai, Teso and Turkana, the question is: Are they the descendants of the Copts who fled southwards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kalenjin thesis seems to be that the Myoot \u2014 their maternal ancestors \u2014 moved out of Egypt southwards at about the same time as the Israelites were scurrying out of Egypt northwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The linguistic evidence adduced by the Kalenjin counterparts of the Jewish Soferim is telltale. Compare the Pentateuch with, for instance, Kipkoeech araap Sambu\u2019s book The Kalenjin People\u2019s Egypt Origin Legend Revisited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, before we do so, let us summarise the Bible story on Israel\u2019s flight. After wandering for 40 years around a peak in Edom (known variously as Hor or Horeb or Sinai or \u201cMountain of God\u201d), they gave their new god Aten the name Yahoo, taken from the local Shasu-Edomites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, they arrived at the foot of Nebo or Pisgah, a Moabite hill on Jordan\u2019s East Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atop Pisgah, \u201cthe Lord\u201d showed Moses the extent, beauty and economic prospects of \u201cthe Promised Land\u201d of Canaan but told him that he would never see that land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, following a mass circumcision ritual at Gilgal, the \u201cchildren of Israel\u201d crossed the River Jordan to capture Jericho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we turn to the Kalenjin version of the story, please keep in mind the biblical terms \u201cPisgah\u201d, \u201ccircumcision\u201d, \u201cGilgal\u201d, \u201cJordan\u201d and \u201cJericho\u201d which I have just used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was from a mountain called Psigiis that the leader of this southern \u201cExodus\u201d viewed the Kalenjin \u201cCanaan\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of Psigiis (Pisgah?) \u2014 the term which gave this vanguard Kalenjin group its name Kipsigiis \u2014 the leader viewed the whole range of what would become modern Kalenjinland from Koibatek and Nakuru to Lake Victoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because, during the wandering, the Kalenjin people had had no time to circumcise their boys, the whole Kalenjin community was forced to camp somewhere called Tulwaap Monyiis for a mass circumcision ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cmass circumcision\u201d? Of course! Among Egypt\u2019s most important religious impositions on Israel was the Nilotic practice of chopping off the foreskin of the male organ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the Copts, it had been a bequest from the god Ra. Long after the Exodus, the Jewish writers of the Pentateuch would replace Ra with their own newfangled Yahweh as the god who had demanded the \u201ccut.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, with the Soferim, there is no attempt to explain the significance of circumcision \u2014 which is among the proofs that their Nilotic masters had imposed it on the Israelite slaves without explaining its religious significance to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the Book of Joshua reports that all the male Hebrews who came out of Egypt were circumcised, but that those born during the wanderings were not and that a mass circumcision was thus performed on all the males at Gilgal in the plains of Jericho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moses\u2019 Levites performed a mass ritual at Gilgal just before crossing the Jordan. Sambu writes: \u201c[The Kalenjin] did not name the [corresponding] hill Gilgal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But… it is interesting to note that one of the places the [Kalenjin] occupied twice while wandering in the plains [of the Rift Valley] was Gilgil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which Kenyan has never heard of Gilgil, the thriving trade centre between the lakes Naivasha and Elmentaita?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Israelites then crossed a river called Jordan to take Jericho, just as the Kipsigiis crossed a river called Chooryan to take Kericho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can it mean? We now pronounce the \u201cch\u201d in \u201cJericho\u201d like the \u201ck\u201d in \u201cKenya\u201d. But the native Jebusites \u2014 a clan of the Canaanite natives \u2014 pronounced it like the \u201cch\u201d in \u201cchurch\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jericho, therefore, rhymed with Kericho. Moreover, in the Kalenjin language, \u201ck\u201d is usually pronounced like a hard \u201cg\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kericho, therefore, may originally have been Gericho (which is not at all far from Jericho.) What a small world ours is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only question is: Who borrowed from whom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The near-identity between Pisgah and Psigiis, Gilgal and Gilgil, Yordan and Chooryan, Jericho and Kericho, etc., and the circumstances in which those terms occur affirm at least a historical confluence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neo-Hamites: A shared history of flight and fight<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kalenjin, Dholuo, ancient Coptic, ancient Canaanite (or Ugarito-Phoenician) and ancient Edomite belong to the same ethnolinguistic family known as Nilo-Hamites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nilo-Hamites had a profound influence on Hebrew, both when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and for centuries in post-Exodus Canaan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pentateuch is chockfull of religious imagery and vocabulary borrowed from Coptic. If the Kalenjin left Egypt at the same time as the Israelites, then that is a historical confluencer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In mind-bogglingly salacious, the Deuteronomistic Historian tells us exactly what terrible things the Israelites, under \u201cJoshua\u201d, did to the Canaanites, savage deeds which reverberate up to now as a \u201cPalestinian problem\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is: What happened to the Kalenjin\u2019s \u201cCanaanites\u201d, the autochthonous Ogiek- Sirikwa-Ndorobo cluster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the way the Kalenjin react whenever faced with that question, we can infer that the Ogiek\u2019s fate was in every way as horrendous as the Canaanites\u2019 \u2014 numerous fights, flights, deaths, assimilations and adaptations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those were exactly what happened also to the Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites and Amorites after the Israelites had grabbed their lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference is only that, by their \u2018euphemisms,\u2019 the Kalenjin show at least a sense of remorse. The Khazari usurpers of Judah who now lord it over Palestine do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Philip Ochieng If, in Kalenjin cosmology, the expanse of land that centers on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kalenjinmedia.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}