My Journey to Recognizing the 1800s Adze Used to Assault a Tennessee Black Man Having its Origin in Africa

Years ago I stumbled upon a historical figure called Robert Renfro, also called Black Bob. I was intrigued by him as he was considered a hero in his day by Nashvillians and became the first emanepated black and first black business owner in Tennessee. Actually, he helped found Tennessee. Many Africanims emerged from his story as I read into his life. Kemetic Africanisms. He was on the boat that founded Fort Nashboro with masonic surveyors from Virginia. Initially this was call the district of Meroe, and later became the state of Tennessee. This term was famiar to me from my African studies of Nubia and Kemet and the Moors. Black Bob was a friend of Andrew Jackson, a freemason. When I went to Andrew Jackson's home, which is a museum now, I saw a book from his lodge, the first lodge in Tennessee, it was the first book and listed the names of the first head people of the lodge. Those names were the same names that I read on Black Bobs emancipation papers signed 5 years after Tennessee became a state. He did not fit the mold of the story of who black people were in America during the 17-1800s. "Bob" has a dual meaning in freemasonry. Part of it comes from the plum bob surveying tool. Which is an interest to me and my studies of Seshat. Which is also see with her holding it in the Temple of Edfu. 

One of the things about Black Bob that I found interesting was his lawsuit won at the hands of his friend and former attorney, now judge, Andrew Jackson. It was a lawsuit against a schoolmaster, Anderson Lavender, who assaulted Black Bob for talking proper  on April 25, 1800. The Grand Jury of Davidson County indicted him on this charge. Andrew Jackson, Archibald Roane (future Governor) and David Campbell were the judges when the suit was before the Superior Court, all freemasons in Nashville. 

John Hamilton, the attorney for the State wrote in May of 1800 that Anderson Lavender, “Did make an assault and battery with an intent him the said Bob then and there feloneously, wilfully and of his malice aforethought to kill & murder, against the Statue in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of our State.” Tr, TdaCo-MDSC Law Min. Bk., 1788-1803, pp 316-317. From Legal Papers of Andrew Jackson pg 162. What does the foot-adze that Lavender carried in his right hand to kill Bobb look like?

This brings me back to Kemet and its tools. The iron for why people settled in Tennessee during the frontier days. Why they needed Africans in the first place to conquer this land. The knowledge. Metorietic iron on a wood handle was used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. The irony (no pun intended), of Black Bob being assaulted with an adze, similar to the instrument used in rituals to Open the Mouth, or be seen. 

The adze is depicted in ancient Egyptian art from the Old Kingdom onward.[1] Originally the adze blades were made of stone, but already in the Predynastic Period copper adzes had all but replaced those made of flint.[2] While stone blades were fastened to the wooden handle by tying, metal blades had sockets into which the handle was fitted.

A depiction of an adze was also used as a hieroglyph, representing the consonants stp, "chosen", and used as: ...Pharaoh XX, chosen of God/Goddess YY...
The ahnetjer (Manuel de Codage transliteration: aH-nTr) depicted as an adze-like instrument,[3] was used in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, intended to convey power over their senses to statues and mummies. It was apparently the foreleg of a freshly sacrificed bull or cow with which the mouth was touched

The Egyptian terms for the ceremony are wpt-r and wn-r, both translating literally to "opening of the mouth." The verb wpi denotes an opening that entails splitting, dividing or separating, and is used to describe the separation of two combatants, the dividing of time or even a determination of the truth. The verb wn emphasizes accessibility and exposure, used in contexts such as wn-hr, literally "open the face", but more correctly meaning "see" or "be seen".

1. Setep

Wood; New Kingdom
From the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut
Rogers Fund, 1925
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 25.3.40
2. Adze
Bronze, wood and leather; New Kingdom
From the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut
Gift of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1896
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 96.4.7
3. Pesesh-kef knife
(replica)
"offering ritual in which two blades of meteoric iron, called the ntjrwy, are said to open the mouth. Faulkner translates this spell as "O Osiris the King, I split open your mouth for you gods iron of Upper Egypt, 1 ingot; gods iron of Lower Egypt, 1 ingot."
The ritual was thus be performed with various implements, most commonly a wood-carving adze, which were touched to the lips by the officiating priest. An adze was an arched metal blade fasted across the top of a wooden handle with leather thongs, used in woodworking. The ceremonial adze was made from the metal of heaven, bi3 n pt, meteoric iron. The adze mimicked carving and sculpture, logical if the Funerary ceremony evolved from the ritual performed on a statue.

Another implement often depicted in the ceremony was the psh-kef knife. The psh-kef knife is first attested in prehistoric tombs as early as the Naqada I period.
Psh-kf sets were limestone platters with recesses that usually hold the two ntjrwy blades, a blunt psh-kf knife, two tiny bottles and four tiny cups. The bottles and cups are half of light-color and half of black. The same set of implements is listed together in the inventories of temple equipment found at the mortuary temple of Neferirkare at Abusir.

The implements used in the Pyramid Text ritual continue to appear in private tombs of the Middle Kingdom, but a rather different version of the ritual also appears in the Coffin Texts. Now Ptah joins Horus to open the deceaseds mouth, then Ptah and Thoth transform the deceased into an akh, and Thoth replaces the heart in the body, so that the deceased remembers what has been forgotten and can eat bread as desired."

Give us this day our daily bread. After the opening of the mouth with the iron instrument from heaven we today call from a meteor because it is not found on earth, the deceased could eat bread. Then the mouth is opened with the ntjrwy tool, and the mummy is presented to the son "who loves him." More scenes depict the son coming to the House of Gold, opening the mouth with the mdjdft-tool, and touching the mummys mouth with the little finger again.

Carpenter's Adze from a Foundation Deposit for Hatshepsut's Templeca. 1479–1458 B.C.

Izapa Stela 5 Seshat and Early Egyptian Writing

There are several studies that address the early writings of Africa and how they have shown up in the Americas. I will begin to touch on them here. There are also more concrete correlations between Thoth/Seshat and these gods/goddesses represented in the language and script of the early writers in South America. I will go into detail about this aspect in another post.

Izapa Stela 5

"Some researchers claim that the Mesoamerican writing systems are related to African scripts. In the early 19th century, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque proposed that the Mayan inscriptions were probably related to the Libyco-Berber writing of Africa.^[7] Leo Wiener^[8] and others claim that various Olmec and Epi-Olmec symbols are similar to those found in the Vai script, in particular, the symbols on the Tuxtla Statuette, Tao Mask, Cascajal Block, and the celts in Offering 4 at La Venta. These assertions have found no support among Mesoamerican researchers. While mainstream scholars have made significant progress translating the Maya script, researchers have yet to translate Olmec glyphs."

Also, there is an online document called Ancient Mariners in America that is noteworthy that has also addressed the writing that the Libyan women practiced, Tifnag, and its occurrence in the United States.

"Tifinag lettering originated in Mauretania, where it is still in use among the Berbers in the Atlas Mountains. Examples of these lettering forms are scratched on cave shelters and rock outcrops throughout the United States and Canada, and in North Africa. Universities in present- day Algeria, Morocco and Libya, having worked with Dr. Fell, can verify and translate the ancestral scripts housed in the archives and libraries."

"Begin With the Children of Your Teachings"

How many times have you heard it said, "Its better to start teaching them while they are young!" These words can go down as written in the hall of fame, or "House of Fame" if translated by Egyptologist into English from heiroglyphs. In fragment B02, 7,2 translated in the Book of Thoth on page 15 the script directs "the-one-who-loves-knowledge" to say

"O may your prophecy be eternally young! O foremost one of (or before) the House of Documents! Begin with the children of your teaching!"

There are many instances in Egyptian records that show the importance of learning the hieroglyphs and to scribe as a child. House of Documents, Hall of Records, or House of Books are all what I would consider to be a modern day Library. In my blog I will refer to the place where those in KMT stored writings as libraries, instead of the translations provided. Libraries have been found dating as far back to the time of Narmers palate and King Scorpio, who carried on the teachings of Ssh around 3200BC during the Naqada III period (pre-Dynastic). We will discuss him more later.

Children figure prominately in the art of writing. Teaching our children this gift that has been passed down to us by our intelligent ancestors is most beneficial when they are young. And that, my friends, is just ancient Kemetic wisdom!