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.

A Thousand Words

Ramesses II sits beneath the cosmic Ished

 as the gods Attum, Seshat and Thot write his names and years on its leaves. (from the Ramesseum)

The other day I took some time out for myself to visit the local $2 movie theater. Eddie Murphy used to be one of the best comedians and I remember when people went in droves to see RAW. So feeling nostalgic about the Eddie Murphy of my youth, I decided to see "A Thousand Words". Although I had not seen any of the previews and knew nothing of it's content, I was pleasantly surprised.  Overall,it was a good movie and quite funny. Not only that, it's plot centered around the Tree of Life and the book publishing industry. Specifically, the quest to publish a book to impact millions of souls.

In the movie, Eddie Murphy's character, Jack McCall, had to work through the trauma of feeling abandoned by his father, who left when he was young. This struggle led to him being closed off to his true self, the person he was meant to be. It was a story of self discovery which led to a spiritual and genetic connection through meditation and magic. These lessons were inundated with imagery of a magical Bodhi tree with falling leaves intertwined with the plot of a black man who was the top dog at a book publishing firm. Mark my words, this may be Eddie Murphy's comeback movie.

One of the central turning points in the movie is when Jack "sees the blue pearls". This leads to an epiphany just prior to his blood getting on the tree. The color blue is my favorate color so I like to hear it being talked about in a positive light. This led me to wonder what the blue pearl in this movie signified, so I Googled it. One website states that the pineal gland and the blue pearl or crown chakra are the gateway to heaven. It is said also that by meditating on the blue pearl, which is inside the pineal gland, one can eventually receive guidance from one's higher soul. The outward appearance of spiritual work on this is the "laying on of hands".

Chakravatin, King Ashoka Chakra 

Mahabodhi Temple,
"Great Awakening Temple"
site of the Bodhi tree

In the movie Jack does not speak because of this phenomena connecting him with the Tree of Life, represented by the Bodhi tree. In ancient times, Indian emperor King Asoka (304-232 BC) paid homage to the Bodhi tree at the Mahabodhi Temple, and held a festival every year in its honor during the month of Kattika. It is said that in the end times, lotus will grow here. It is also at this temple that Buddha spent 7 weeks at 7 spots meditating and considering his enlightenment experience. Several specific places here relate to the traditions surrounding the 7 weeks. In Bangladesh and India, Kartika is the 7th month which begins with the suns entry into Scorpio. This is during mid October on the Gregorian calendar and ends November 15th. In some African cultures, it is forbidden to say the number 7. So speech and absence of speech is connected with this divinity. In Egypt, Seshat is nameless. To call her name at the New Year hour is to give one power. The number 7 is taboo also among the Kolokuma of the Ijaw in Nigeria, Malinke (descendants of the Mali Empire), Mbundu, Kikuyu and Kamba (Bantu people in Kenya), to name a few. Among the Mandak and Ga, the avoidance of the number 7 is found in speech where 7 is referred to as 6+1 according to the "Encylcopedia of African Religion" (p 611).

"Among the Dogon tribe in Africa the spirit of the 7th ancestor is repronsible for world order. This spirit also wove a cloth that is a manifestation of the Word and imparted it to humanity. The word for the cloth is soy meaning "it is the spoken word". Soy is also the word for seven." states the Encyclopedia of African Religion. Also in a book by Shannon Dorey called The Nummo about the Dogon the author further connects mathematics, the word, speech, and 7 with the Dogon and Egypt. The author states "The number 22 is the measure of the circumference of a circle when the diameter is 7. At one time this proportion, known as pi, was a religios secret. The circle is a symbol of immortality and seven relates to the Master of Speech (identified with the number 7 p152)....In the Dogon religion the "word" was a symbol for DNA....The words which were in the tonu soy of the po, Amma made them come out and gave them to the Nommo: this became the cloth that cannot be broken. According to the Dogon, the rope represents the unbreakable tie Amma had established between the ancestors and their descendents. The cloth in this passage is another representation of the "word", or the DNA that is a part of all life and identified with Amma. This same symbolism appears in Catholic iconography and was discussed....in relation to priests being "men of the word" and "men of the cloth".  So here again we see how the teaching of science and mathematics is passed down through story telling in African culture.

The god Osiris paints Pharaoh's
name onto leaf of the
Tree of Life. Karnak.

Because the number 7, Seshat, the Tree of Life, and books are the topic of this blog I thought it fitting to talk about this movie which includes all of these themes in the plot. The only movie I haven't commented on that I have seen at this discount theater is Avatar, another "Tree" movie. Now, is it me, or is Hollywood, the city of stars, spending a lot of energy on Tree of Life movies which, in their various forms, include attributes of Seshat? I hope that you enjoy this movie as I have and add your comments to this blog on your insights.