Notes to Gerald Massey's Ancient Egypt

jwr Originally the roots for English language may have started as a religious concept based on the deity IAU or IAO - which have been explained 1907 in Gerald Massey's Ancient Egypt (which now is in the public domain). Some of the relevant quotations already had been summarized in appendix I to English and Globish - Optimized Linguistic Designs. This manuscripts adds some other relevant quotations towards the vowels' symbolism, which accidentally seems to be related to IAU respectively IAO.

The Ass
Massey suggests to consider the ass's utterance ee-aw as a prototype for the vowel IAOU transits, from which the Egyptian language derived the ass's name Iu, Aiu, and Aai. The ass's utterance seems to have been the symbol for the first step towards extending the divine concept to a full Gnostic name of seven vowels: Jehovah. This legendary concept might promote the ass to the author of the musical scale. In Massey's documentation Iu signifies to come and go, that is: I is symbolizing to come, and U symbolizesto go. The central A is inserted later to complete the triphtong Aiu, Iao, Ioa, Iahu, which is to be completed to the Gnostic seven vowel word Jehovah. These successive steps may be sketched in a triangle from the initial letter I, to the second stage IU, the third stage IAU to the ultimate level Jehovah like:

I I U1 I A U2 J e h o v a h3

The Golden Ass

Of course I remembered The Golden Ass4 of Apuleius, but I didn't find any clue for any reference to the symbolic ass in Massey's descriptions.

1 prototype IU (to come and go) for the vowel IAOU transits: symbolized by the ass's utterance ee-aw 2 The central A is inserted later to complete the triphtong Aiu, Iao, Ioa, Iahu 3 The inserting process is to be completed up to the Gnostic seven vowel word Jehovah. 4 the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety - which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus)

Expressing Vowels in Hieroglyphs

What still puzzles me is: the erroneous sequence of the vowels in Aiu, which should be IAU or (the correctly spelled) Iahu, and most of all the proof how Egyptians might have been able to write down vowels in hieroglyphs. After all the Egyptians had an alphabet of 24 consonants.

However I learned the method for expressing vowels by using the glottal stop such as in I didn't say some mice, I said some ice 5. In fact in this book the alphabet starts with the symbols for the vowels A, I or Y, W or U, O, which would be sufficient for IAU and IAOU. I didn't dig deeper than that however.

Manx, Cornish, Welsh

Massey also refers to the prehistoric Jews of Cornwall and he suggests that the divine names in several languages (Manx Iee, Cornish Iau, Welsh Iau) may indirectly (via Iah-Jehovah. Iah) have been derived from the Egyptian name Iu6.

5 Page 10 in Discovering Egyptian Hieroglyphs a practical guide by Karl-Theodor Zauzich (1980/1992) 6 From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 501) by Gerald Massey

Vowel Symbolism Search for the keyword Vowel

From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1 - page 39) by Gerald Massey
The Ass was also honored like the Ape of Taht-Ani as a saluter of the Gods or Nature-Powers. It was a great past-master of pre-human sounds, as the pre-human utterer of the vowels in their earliest form. (Nat. Genesis.) The Egyptians call the Ass by the name of Iu, Aiu, and Aai, three forms of one primary diphthong in which the seven vowel-sounds originated. Iu signifies to come and go, which might aptly describe the Asss mode of producing the voice. Aiu or Iu with the A protheic shows the process of accretion7 or agglutination8 which led to the word Aiu, Iao, Ioa, Iahu becoming extended to the seven vowels finally represented in the fully drawn-out name of Jehovah, which was written with the seven vowels by the Gnostics. The English attribute the dual sound of hee-haw to the Donkey, and, if we omit the aspirate, eeaw is near enough as a variant and the equivalent of Iu, Aiu, or Aai, as the name given to itself by the Ass which was registered in language by the Egyptians. The animal with his loud voice and long-continued braying was an unparalleled prototype of the Praiser and Glorifier of the Gods or Nature-Powers. He uttered his vowel-sounds at the bottom and top of the octave which had only to be filled in for the Ass to become one of the authors of the musical scale.

The letter H - All came out of the letter H.

From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1 - page 42) by Gerald Massey According to the hidden Wisdom, which is now almost a dead letter, there are reasons why we should be particular in sounding the letter H as an aspirate9. In the hieroglyphics one H or Ha-sign is the fore-part of a Lion, signifying that which is first, beginning, essence, chief, or Lord; and Shu the power of Breathing-force is represented by a panting lion. This, then, is the Ha, and in expelling the breath it makes the sound of Ha. Thus the Lion says Ha, and is the figure of breathing-force; and this one of the origins in language survives in the letter Hwhen properly aspirated. It is a dark saying of the Rabbins that All came out of the letter H. The Egyptian zotypes and hieroglyphics are the letters in which such dark sayings were written and can still be read. The letter H, Hebrew He, Egyptian Ha, is the sign of breath, as a Soul of Life, but as the hieroglyphics show, even the breath that is first signified was not human. The earliest typical breather is an animal. The panting lion imaged the likeness of the solar force and the breath of the breeze at dawn, as an ideographic zotype of this especial Naturepower. On the line of upward ascent the lion was given to the god Shu, the Egyptian Mars.

7 The act of increasing by natural growth; especially the increase of organic bodies by the internal accession of parts; organic growth. 8 Agglutination is a process in linguistic morphology derivation in which complex words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each with a single grammatical or semantic meaning. 9 A sound produced by such a puff of air.

Various quotations for IU, AU, IAU, AUI in the work of Massey (1907 10)
From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 499) by Gerald Massey Thus the name of an eternal, self-existent being which is hvhy in Hebrew can be traced as Huhi, the name for the one eternal, ever-living, ever-lasting god as Egyptian. And now for the first time we can distinguish the one name, hvhy from the other Hy, if only on Egyptian ground. Iu, with variants in Au, Iau, Aui11, and others, is also an Egyptian word, but with no linguistic relationship to the word Huh. Iu is likewise the name of an Egyptian god, as Iuem-hetep, he who comes with peace, who was primarily the son of Ptah, and who was repeated in the cult of Atum-Ra as Nefer-Atum. In fact, Atum-Ra is both Huhi and Iu as the one god living in truth, the father manifesting as the evercoming son, who was Iu-sa the son of Iusas in the cult of On. All that was ever represented to the Jewish mind by the name of Ihuh (Ihvh or Jehovah) had been expressed to the Egyptian by the word huhi, or, later, hehi. As Egyptian huh signified everlastingness, millions of times, eternity, and Huhi was also a name of their god the eternal. It had been a title, we repeat, of Ptah, of Atum, and of Osiris, each in turn, in three different cults at Memphis, On, and Abydos. Huhi, then, was the eternal as the father; he who always had been, ever was, ever should be, and hence the everlasting god. Iu was the ever-coming son, Iu-sa or Iu-em-hetep, the son who comes with peace as periodic manifestor for the eternal father. Thus the One God of the Jews was Egyptian in this twofold character, both by nature and by name. From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 501) by Gerald Massey It is noticeable that the prophet calls the Lord who is to gather the Jews together from all lands by the double name of Iah-Jehovah. Iah is the Egyptian Iu, whose followers were the primeval Jews of Egypt north and south (Pathros), of thiopia and Chaldea, of the islands of the sea, and the remotest shores of the earth, including the Jews of Cornwall. These are the prehistoric Jews who are to be known by the name of the god they worshipped. This range will include the black Jews of Africa and India, and all the rest of those whose god we identify with Iu the Egyptian original and prototype of all; Iu as god the son, whether of the father as Atum or as Ptah. No such world-wide dispersion of the Jewish race from Palestine or Judea had ever occurred in the time of Isaiah. It is the religious community, not the race, that will account for the Jews who emigrated to the ends of the earth, and for the names of the Jewish god, who was the Egyptian Iu, Phoenician Iao, Hebrew Iah, Assyrian Iau, Egypto-gnostic Ieou (greater and lesser), Chinese Iaou, Polynesian Iho-Iho, Dyak Iaouh, Nicobar Islands Eewu, Mexican Ao, Toda Au, Hungarian Iao, Manx Iee, Cornish Iau, Welsh Iau (greater and lesser), Hebrew Iao-Sabaoth, Chaldean Iao-Heptaktis, Greek Ia, and IE12, Latin Jupiter and Jove. To follow the Jews as the Aiu of Egypt in their world-wide dispersion, we shall have to think in continents rather than in Petticoat Lanes and Ghettos.

10 First published London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1907, now in the public domain. 11 It may be noted that the divine name in Arabic: Allh graphically correlates to the name aUI. In pre-Islamic Arabia, Allah was used by Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity. 12 This probably correlates to the word EI and the letter E at Apollo's temple as described by Plutarch in Of the word EI engraven over the gate of apollo's temple at delphi. - The Morals, vol. 4 . See the details in Appendix III and the image in : E - of the E-symbol Engraven Over the Gate of Apollos Temple at Delphi

The worshippers of Iao in Phoenicia, of Iau in Assyria, of Iao in Syria, Iau and Hu in Britain, Ia or Iu in Greece, Jupiter in Italy, Iho-Iho in Polynesia, Iau in America were each and all of them Jews in a sense, but the sense was religious, not originally ethnical; and religion does not determine race any more than language does in later ages of the world. There was a religion of the god Iu or Iao in Egypt thirteen thousand years ago. That god was Atum-Iu, born son of Ptah. He was the earliest father in heaven because he was the divine Ra in his primordial sovereignty. He is the god in two persons who was first figured as the sun upon the double horizon = the father in the west, the son in the east. This god went forth from Kam by several names and various routes. Those who worshipped him as Atum became the Adamites, the Edomites, the red men; those who worshipped him as Iao, Iah, or Iu became the Jews in many lands, and these are the Jews of that world-wide dispersion recognized by Isaiah, which did not follow any known historical exodus from Egypt or captivity in Babylon, or migration from Palestine. The Jews were only ethnical at root when the root was the vine in Egypt, or in thiopia beyond, and the Jews were one of its branches. They were only ethnical at root when the race was black, whether these were the black Jews in Africa or in India. From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 502) by Gerald Massey Naturally the wisdom was carried into the island of Borneo with the cult of the god Iaouah, whose worshippers are elsewhere called the Ius or Jews from the Egyptian deity who was Iu or Aiu by name both in the cult of Ptah at Memphis and of Atum-Ra at On. The same god is found in the Babylonian mythology with the name Ia, or Iau = Iah in Hebrew (Pinches, T. G., Proc. Soc. of Bib. Arch. ). But it is not necessary to suppose the Assyrian god Iau was derived from the Hebrew deity Iahu, or vice versa, when there is a common origin for both in the Egyptian god Iu. This is not a matter merely of philology, but of the characters in the mythology. Iau is the sage of the gods (Assyn. Fragments). ... Further and finally, it was Ptah-Iu who, with his Ali, the Elohim, created the Aarrugarden as a paradise of pleasure in the earth of eternity. And in the Assyrian eschatology it is Iau, the sage of the gods, who transports the justified spirits after death to the place of delights, where they are fed on butter and honey and drink the water that gives eternal life (Records, vol. xi. 161-2). Our British Druids worshipped a deity of the same name and dual nature as the Egyptian Iu, the Assyrian Iau, the Hebrew Iahu. This divine duality, consisting of the father and the son, was called by them Iau the elder and Iau the younger, corresponding to the gnostic Ieou and Iao. The god Iu, as son of Ptah, was an astronomical builder and architect of the heavens. Iu the son of Atum was also reputed to be a great builder. As the Kamite Solomon he was not only the prince of peace and the divine healer; he was also said to have designed the Temple... From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 506) by Gerald Massey The ass and the young sun-god also were both named Iu, and Iu was the son of Atum-Ra, the ass being his zotype. Iu, as Egyptian, is represented by Iao in Phoenician and in Hebrew. Clement Alexander, who was an Egyptian, spells the name of Jehovah as Iau. Thus, Iu is the ass in Egyptian, Iao is a name of the god with an asss head, and Iau is Jehovah, the god of the Jews and the Christians also. Epiphanius asserts that the deity Sabaoth has the face of an ass. He calls it the gnostic Sabaoth. But Sabaoth was also the Jewgod, or god Iu, who was known by the name of Iao-Sabaoth.

Various quotations for Colors in the work of Massey

From: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 144) by Gerald Massey Some such color scheme is apparent in Egypt when Horus is the white god, Osiris is the god in black, Shu the god in red, Amun the god in blue, Num the god in green. In the Egyptian series of colors yellow likewise represented corn, which gave the name to the yellow Neith.