THE SERPENT AND THE SPIRAL REPRESENT THE WISDOM OF THE MOTHER GODDESS IMMANENT IN THE SONS OF THE FATHER/MOTHER GOD AND THE NESHI/NSHI/ESHI ARE THE LIVING INCARNATIONS OF THIS SERPENTINE WISDOM!
In Igbo culture the Eshi/Nshi phenomenon is found in place names such as Ama-Eshi (Land of Eshi) – a town in Anambra State reputed in folklore to have some of the most powerful witch-doctors in Igbo land; Umu-eshi (Children of Eshi), the birthplace of the author’s mother, a town in Ideato Local Government, Imo State; Nwa-nshi (Child of Nshi/Eshi), the local Igbo name for dwarfs. Characteristically the words Eshi and Nshi combine to give Enshi, the Sumerian name of the first son of Seth! (Sitchen, The Lost Book of Enki, 2003, p. 188) This again would support the thesis that the Igbo take the bearing of their bloodline from Adam through Seth, and that the Canaanite/Sumerian people of Akkad, Babylon and Mesopotamia had subterranean connections with the Igbo bloodline.
The Egyptians believed that their gods came from a land called Punt. Punt was a mythical land where the gods dwelt with men who were long-lived, holy and divine. The Greeks in their own time pronounced Punt as Panch or Panchea. Renowned African archaeologist Felix Chami in his work The Unity of African Ancient History 3000 B.C. to A.D. 500, undertook an extensive analysis of the term Pa-nch(ea) and Punt. Egyptian and Greek records maintained that Punt/Panch was located in a horizon land in interior Africa south of Egypt. Chami concluded that Punt was a cognate for Bantu, and Panch a generic name for a race of dwarfs whom he called “nchi” from a land somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. He noted that in Swahili, pa is interchangeable with Kwa, hence replacing the “pa” in Pa-nch with the Kiswahili word “kwa”, meaning ‘belonging to’, he concluded that the Pa-nch would translate into Kiswahili as Kwa-Nshi. In fact without knowing it Chami has had made a great discovery for the native name of the monoliths which the Ikom oral tradition says were made by dwarfs, is Akwa Nshi. An Igbo mythology known as Ndi Ichie Akwa Mythology or Folklore Origins of the Igbo (I.N.C.Nwosu, 1983) maintains that God gave the Law in the form of stone tablets to the ancestors of the Black race, and that these stone tablets were called Ichie Akwa (a cognate of Akwa Nshi). The story says that leadership of the Black race, hence the world fell on the Igbo nation by primogeniture.
The Akwa Nshi stones of Ikom are each a representation of an ancestor. It features the ancestor Eve (whom the Ikom indigenes call Shishe (by an uncanny coincidence, Shishe happens to be the same Hebrew name which Adam gave to Eve the moment she was created), the first woman on earth to ever bear a child by pregnancy! Another monolith among those that have been transcribed so far, bore the name Kheme (Ham). Ikom indigenes translate the term Akwa Nshi as ‘Spirits in the Earth’. This may mean that the stones above ground are representations of god-men who have gone underground, died, or were god-sons of the earth goddess.
Native legends say the monoliths were made by dwarfs who acted with one mind (having a group soul), who were called Mo-nkom in the native Ikom dialect, which literally means ‘the little people (mo), of one mind (nkom)’. The word Nshi/Eshi and variations of it were also used by Egyptians and Cushites as a secret name of pygmies and Blacks from the land of the gods. Chami noted that the Egyptians attributed the origin of Pygmies to the land of Punt … and they identified the Puntites as being “nehsi” … The Cushites maintained the same concept for Black people whom they called “nehesyu”. The Swahili of the coast of East Africa have maintained the word “nyehusi” for black. (p. 149)
Other descriptions of the land of Panch (also called Panchea) from Greek sources as diverse as Herodotus, Iambulus and Euhemerus indicated that it was located on the Equator at a place where the “day (was) equal to night and the sun (was) overhead”. These Greek sources maintained that the inhabitants of Punt/Panch observed a kinship structure of extended family and respect for elders, they were “literate, having an alphabet out of which they wrote words in upright columns”, they dressed in raffia, some in animal hide and others wove cotton which they died purple (purple is a bluish hue, Igbo people traditionally wove cloth called akwa mmiri, always died blue). Their occupation included farming and metal working. Their land grew palm trees and other nut bearing trees. The land was accessible via the sea and through a coastal land of many islands and lakes (a Delta region) where trading by barter was carried on with foreigners. In the mainland there is a large river which flowed from “west to east”. Chami identified this river as the River Niger which flows through Igbo land and the Niger Delta into the Atlantic Ocean. Records amassed by Chami about the natives of Panchea show that some of the inhabitants lived in earth-mounds and serpents were revered all over their country.
Punt, which Chami also identifies as the origin of the word Bantu (when voiceless /p/ is replaced with its voiced equivalent /b/), was not only regarded as the ‘Land of the Gods’ by the Egyptians, its inhabitants were revered as god-men and sons and daughters of the gods. A description of them from records of the New Kingdom dating 1500-1100 B. C. refers to them as “pig tail wearers, the scar-bearers … the Nehusyu with burnt face (referring to their black colour); the frizzy haired”. (Chami, Ibid., p. 148) The pigtail is the Igbo symbol of authority, known as nza, the use of which is diffused among some of their Kwa neighbours. It is one of the many cultural practices of the Kwa that have been found among Dravidian Indian priests.
Euhemerus who visited this land circa 330 B.C. reported that the inhabitants of “Panchea” were original to the land – “that they were sprung from the soil itself” (autochthonous) and that “people from other parts of the ancient world used to come there to trade. These included Oceanites (Southeast Asians), Indians, Scythians and Cretans.” (Chami, Ibid., p. 160) Information from Herodotus (500 B.C.) indicates that the land of the dwarfs is reachable from North Africa by crossing the desert and after a journey of many months arriving at a forest region of wild beasts. Other Greek as well as Persian (king Cambyses II, 525 B. C.), Carthaginian (Hanno, 600 B. C.), sources of information say that sea farers travelling along the coast of West Africa encounter these black dwarfs in a place of swamps and “lakes” or creeks not too far from a volcanic mountain. (See Herodotus, The Histories, p. 89; Chami, Ibid., p. 158)
The place of creeks, lakes and swamps is of course the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; in fact the monoliths are located in the Niger Delta region, within viewing distance from the volcanic mount Cameroons. There is no doubt that these written records by eye witnesses who visited West Africa more than 2,500 years ago are referring to the same dwarfs who as Ikom people maintain, created the monoliths and their inscriptions. As the reports say, the dwarfs were autochthonous and long-lived. They were holy for the very gods lived among them. These were none other than the Nwa-Nshi - the race of dwarfs that founded Igbo civilization and through the Igbo cultural and genetic bloodline maintained the Divine Bloodline of Sons of God! It would seem that whereas the Enshi dwarfs were well known as magicians all over Sub-Saharan Africa, it is only in Igbo land that they maintained a tap root within the culture and the daily life of the people. In fact they were the ambassadors and sustainers of the culture that is identified with the Igbo nation, its religious practices, its cults, especially the Ozo institution of title-taking and title-holding, which is the cult of go-men. They were known in Igbo-land as wizards who commanded the elements with great ease and who were exceedingly “long lived”. (See The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano where Catherine Acholonu dwelt on the Nwanshi phenomenon.)
The Egyptians believed that their gods came from a land called Punt. Punt was a mythical land where the gods dwelt with men who were long-lived, holy and divine. The Greeks in their own time pronounced Punt as Panch or Panchea. Renowned African archaeologist Felix Chami in his work The Unity of African Ancient History 3000 B.C. to A.D. 500, undertook an extensive analysis of the term Pa-nch(ea) and Punt. Egyptian and Greek records maintained that Punt/Panch was located in a horizon land in interior Africa south of Egypt. Chami concluded that Punt was a cognate for Bantu, and Panch a generic name for a race of dwarfs whom he called “nchi” from a land somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. He noted that in Swahili, pa is interchangeable with Kwa, hence replacing the “pa” in Pa-nch with the Kiswahili word “kwa”, meaning ‘belonging to’, he concluded that the Pa-nch would translate into Kiswahili as Kwa-Nshi. In fact without knowing it Chami has had made a great discovery for the native name of the monoliths which the Ikom oral tradition says were made by dwarfs, is Akwa Nshi. An Igbo mythology known as Ndi Ichie Akwa Mythology or Folklore Origins of the Igbo (I.N.C.Nwosu, 1983) maintains that God gave the Law in the form of stone tablets to the ancestors of the Black race, and that these stone tablets were called Ichie Akwa (a cognate of Akwa Nshi). The story says that leadership of the Black race, hence the world fell on the Igbo nation by primogeniture.
The Akwa Nshi stones of Ikom are each a representation of an ancestor. It features the ancestor Eve (whom the Ikom indigenes call Shishe (by an uncanny coincidence, Shishe happens to be the same Hebrew name which Adam gave to Eve the moment she was created), the first woman on earth to ever bear a child by pregnancy! Another monolith among those that have been transcribed so far, bore the name Kheme (Ham). Ikom indigenes translate the term Akwa Nshi as ‘Spirits in the Earth’. This may mean that the stones above ground are representations of god-men who have gone underground, died, or were god-sons of the earth goddess.
Native legends say the monoliths were made by dwarfs who acted with one mind (having a group soul), who were called Mo-nkom in the native Ikom dialect, which literally means ‘the little people (mo), of one mind (nkom)’. The word Nshi/Eshi and variations of it were also used by Egyptians and Cushites as a secret name of pygmies and Blacks from the land of the gods. Chami noted that the Egyptians attributed the origin of Pygmies to the land of Punt … and they identified the Puntites as being “nehsi” … The Cushites maintained the same concept for Black people whom they called “nehesyu”. The Swahili of the coast of East Africa have maintained the word “nyehusi” for black. (p. 149)
Other descriptions of the land of Panch (also called Panchea) from Greek sources as diverse as Herodotus, Iambulus and Euhemerus indicated that it was located on the Equator at a place where the “day (was) equal to night and the sun (was) overhead”. These Greek sources maintained that the inhabitants of Punt/Panch observed a kinship structure of extended family and respect for elders, they were “literate, having an alphabet out of which they wrote words in upright columns”, they dressed in raffia, some in animal hide and others wove cotton which they died purple (purple is a bluish hue, Igbo people traditionally wove cloth called akwa mmiri, always died blue). Their occupation included farming and metal working. Their land grew palm trees and other nut bearing trees. The land was accessible via the sea and through a coastal land of many islands and lakes (a Delta region) where trading by barter was carried on with foreigners. In the mainland there is a large river which flowed from “west to east”. Chami identified this river as the River Niger which flows through Igbo land and the Niger Delta into the Atlantic Ocean. Records amassed by Chami about the natives of Panchea show that some of the inhabitants lived in earth-mounds and serpents were revered all over their country.
Punt, which Chami also identifies as the origin of the word Bantu (when voiceless /p/ is replaced with its voiced equivalent /b/), was not only regarded as the ‘Land of the Gods’ by the Egyptians, its inhabitants were revered as god-men and sons and daughters of the gods. A description of them from records of the New Kingdom dating 1500-1100 B. C. refers to them as “pig tail wearers, the scar-bearers … the Nehusyu with burnt face (referring to their black colour); the frizzy haired”. (Chami, Ibid., p. 148) The pigtail is the Igbo symbol of authority, known as nza, the use of which is diffused among some of their Kwa neighbours. It is one of the many cultural practices of the Kwa that have been found among Dravidian Indian priests.
Euhemerus who visited this land circa 330 B.C. reported that the inhabitants of “Panchea” were original to the land – “that they were sprung from the soil itself” (autochthonous) and that “people from other parts of the ancient world used to come there to trade. These included Oceanites (Southeast Asians), Indians, Scythians and Cretans.” (Chami, Ibid., p. 160) Information from Herodotus (500 B.C.) indicates that the land of the dwarfs is reachable from North Africa by crossing the desert and after a journey of many months arriving at a forest region of wild beasts. Other Greek as well as Persian (king Cambyses II, 525 B. C.), Carthaginian (Hanno, 600 B. C.), sources of information say that sea farers travelling along the coast of West Africa encounter these black dwarfs in a place of swamps and “lakes” or creeks not too far from a volcanic mountain. (See Herodotus, The Histories, p. 89; Chami, Ibid., p. 158)
The place of creeks, lakes and swamps is of course the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; in fact the monoliths are located in the Niger Delta region, within viewing distance from the volcanic mount Cameroons. There is no doubt that these written records by eye witnesses who visited West Africa more than 2,500 years ago are referring to the same dwarfs who as Ikom people maintain, created the monoliths and their inscriptions. As the reports say, the dwarfs were autochthonous and long-lived. They were holy for the very gods lived among them. These were none other than the Nwa-Nshi - the race of dwarfs that founded Igbo civilization and through the Igbo cultural and genetic bloodline maintained the Divine Bloodline of Sons of God! It would seem that whereas the Enshi dwarfs were well known as magicians all over Sub-Saharan Africa, it is only in Igbo land that they maintained a tap root within the culture and the daily life of the people. In fact they were the ambassadors and sustainers of the culture that is identified with the Igbo nation, its religious practices, its cults, especially the Ozo institution of title-taking and title-holding, which is the cult of go-men. They were known in Igbo-land as wizards who commanded the elements with great ease and who were exceedingly “long lived”. (See The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano where Catherine Acholonu dwelt on the Nwanshi phenomenon.)