In one of humanity's oldest known tales, an Egyptian sailor finds himself shipwrecked after a fierce storm on the Red Sea. At heart, it’s a story of survival - but more importantly, it contains an early expression of the Cushitic ethnosymbolism of a supreme serpent king.
Once he makes landfall, he is met by a jeweled Lovecraftian serpentine creature with skin of gold, who boldly proclaims himself ruler of Punt. Punt was located in the Horn of Africa, inhabited by a diverse set of Cushitic people, and was one of Egypt's earliest trading partners.
Due to Egypt’s familiarity with Punt and their habit of embracing foreign gods, the serpent ruler in this story was probably inspired by Egyptian knowledge of Puntite mythology. Much like in Egypt, serpents seem to represent divine authority among Cushitic people.
In Ancient Nubia, the Uraeus - cobra - embodied divine kingship. There's no surprise then that more serpent symbolism appears in the snakes found on Napatan crowns. For King Taharqa, two cobra heads were worn, symbolizing divine rule over both Kush and Egypt.
While Napatans likely were not Cushitic, serpent symbolism could be cultural residue from when Cushitic-speaking peoples dominated the Middle Nile -a phenomenon also seen in Taharqa's father - Piye's - adherence to the Cushitic fish taboo. More on that ↓ https://x.com/malandroggb/status/1901363303693365543…
malandro
@malandroggb
Mar 16View on Twitter
"They entered not into the king's house, because they were ... eaters of fish; which is an abomination for the palace" On the victory stela of Kushite King Piye (726 BC), conqueror of Egypt, are words revealing adherence to a cultural taboo that had its roots in the Neolithic.
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In antiquity, Roman compiler Solinus wrote of mythical Aethiopian snakes that would bear precious stones. This not only shares parallels with the more famous Nagamani from Hindu mythology, but the jeweled serpent king of Punt, as well as folklore from later Somali clans.
In pre-Aksumite Abyssinia, a familiar story is told. Arwe - a monstrous serpent - ruled over the land before being slain by the Christian founder of the Solomonic dynasty. Though it could be a chance correspondence, the name resembles Uraeus, the Egyptian serpent of kingship.
It is said that Arwe would demand virgins and livestock as sacrifice, and archaeology lends weight to this memory. Excavations dated to the pre-Axumite period in Ethiopia reveals signs of ritual human sacrifice and dense serpent iconography.
Among the Oromo, oral tradition holds that they descend from a primordial serpent ancestor. What's more, Oromo snake priests would be crowned with snakeskin headdresses, resembling the regal serpent headwear found in Nubia. Once again, the serpent is linked to divine authority.
In Saho oral tradition, a legendary ancestor is said to have slain a great serpent, rescuing a maiden in distress - another tale mirroring other Northeast African myths where a patriarch slays a serpent.
Unlike others, the Somali reverence for snakes persisted even after they embraced Islam. Like Oromos, certain clans trace their lineage to a great serpent - their serpentine ancestry granting authority over rivals - and forbid killing snakes, which in turn do not harm them.
During the medieval wars between Ethiopia and Adal, the Sultan of Adal was given the epithet "Arwe of Badle". For Somalis like himself, this was nothing short of praise, and he embraced the name, famously bearing a parasol adorned with winged serpents to show his right to rule.
Still among the Somali, a jeweled serpent is described as having to be killed to retrieve the precious stone it bears. This contrasts with earlier Roman tales where the serpent had to remain alive. Perhaps this shift marks a symbolic transfer of total authority to Islam.
Why? In the Eastern Desert - the Cushitic urheimat - chaos shaped life: famine, vanishing oases, sandstorms, conflict. Yet the serpent moved through it all the same. Perhaps it came to symbolize the one who could impose order, even life, upon a world defined by death and chaos.
Jung's commentary on the serpent also comes to mind: it stands at the borderline of conscious and unconscious - life and death. Ironically, for the pastoral early Cushites, this border wasn’t so abstract. Land was life; failure to protect your grazing land meant a swift death.
If to confront the chaos abound in the Eastern Desert, it takes a man "to go beyond the point of safety the limits of consciousness, as expressed by a the deep crater" (or the desert horizon), the serpent is the symbol of the traveler and his journey. King and his reign.
^ all the above stolen from a friend on Twitter
what do you guys think? @Shimbiris especially with the Oromo snake crowns, that whole qore stuff is kind of making sense. if there was a borrowing/ancestral linkage, you would expect to see parallels in how kingship is portrayed outside of word correspondence.
