Kemet
Encyclopedia : K : KE : KEM : Kemet
| Kemet in Hieroglyphen | |
|---|---|
Kemet (kmt) The Black Land or The Black Earth | |
The word 'kemet' is the english translation for egypt during Ancint Egypt. There are many other names for Kmt (the hiroglif name for egypt)for example in german its khemet,in greek its kimet and in french km.t.
Why did the Egyptions named it Kemet?
The Egyptians of Antiquity gave to their country the name of kemet (kmt in transliteration) that the Egyptologists translate by “the black cotton soil”, i.e. the strip of land made fertile by the black silt deposited by the annual rising of the Nile, vital artery of the age of ancient Egypt. However, the afrocentriques ones - defenders of the theory of a African origin of Egyptian civilization [1] - y see another significance, “the ground of the Blacks”. This interpretation - not recognized by the Egyptological community - is generally regarded as a will of magnifier artificially the past of the Black Africa.
History of the Word
One of the many words which the Egyptians used at the time of Ptolémées for designer is km.t (y) W [3] that the Egyptologists interpret “the inhabitants of the black cotton soil”. However, the fact that in this word the determinative one of place is omitted lets think of the defenders of the afrocentrist cause that this word designates “the black inhabitants”. Actually, it is about a derived word which results from the addition of an ending to the substantive km.t, “the black ground”: km.t (y) W thus means “those of black ground”, just as jmn.tyw, formed starting from jmn.t, “the West”, means “those of the West”. Let us add that no recognized hieroglyphic dictionary associates any derived from the word km.t the black alleged color of the inhabitants of Egypt.
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