Nefer by Willie Cannon-Brown

Author:Willie Cannon-Brown [WILLIE CANNON-BROWN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2011-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

THE AESTHETIC/BEAUTY OF WRITING

Djhuty and Seshet were divine sesh (scribes). Djhuty is well-known as the scribe of the gods, the god of wisdom, knowledge, and science. Seshet, goddess of writing and measurement and ruler of books, is portrayed as a female who wears a headband with horns and a star with her name written SÅ¡3t on it. Her dress is a plain sheath covered by a long panther-skin with the tail that reaches her feet. Seshet with her name, the rosette, inscribed

appears on the obverse side of the upper register of Narmer’s palette. She has also been recorded assisting the king in the ritual of “stretching the cord” associated with astronomical and astrological measurements for the location of temples and recording the king’s jubilees and cattle counts and the king’s campaigns as early as the 2nd Dynasty. The word sesh, translated scribe, is derived from the goddess Seshet’s name. Imhotep was the prime minister of Djoser, Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty (c. 2686–2613 B.C.).

Obenga (1995) points out he poured libation before beginning to write.

Limn, derived from the word luminare, means to illuminate. So Imhotep poured libation to invoke divine illumination and inspiration. These ideas suggest that writing was, first and foremost, based on maat. Djhuty and Maat were the standards for judging truth in writings.

MDW NTR, as a language, was created using words ascribed by the god, Ptah, the god responsible for giving names to all created beings. In the traditional African context, there was no distinction between sacred and secular; therefore, all words were god’s words. The written language was a system consisting of limns, i.e., drawings and paintings, using manifestations of creation to express illuminations and inspirations. This beautiful system of writing was used to express thoughts, words, actions, core beliefs, and values of the people. A scene may be drawn or painted to illustrate some action or activity; but objects within the scene were also used as words and sometime the entire scene was a word. For modern thought, this made the scene complex; but it was not a complex idea in the society of Kemet, even for ordinary citizens. Narmer’s palette, dated stylistically to the Protodynastic period (c.3100–2950 B.C.) held mysteries for modern interpreters; yet, the drawings held no complexity for citizens in the era which they were produced. The drawings were not considered decorations but words that resounded truth. The drawings could be read exactly the way the written word is read today.

The choice not to use the word art from the Latin word ars, art- at the outset, a term imposed on the writing system outside of the Kemetic’ ideology, is not accidental. There is no evidence that the people of Kemet thought of Mdw Ntr or limns as different, nor did they conceive of it as art. Modern terminology coined for specific philosophical disciplines has been used to describe ancient crafts and can be a cause for confusion; consequently, to determine the aesthetic ideal of writing it is necessary to examine it from inside.

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