Kikuyu History: Ancient Egyptian Ties to Kenya’s Largest Ethnic Group
The House of Mumbi
The Kikuyu do not have a tradition of a migration from Egypt. Their Myth of Origin is a sort of Adam and Eve affair. It states that God created a man and a woman and placed them near Mount Kenya. The couple had nine daughters who miraculously received nine men to marry them after their father’s prayers. The Kikuyu call themselves The House of Mumbi in honor of this Mother who was also a potter. However, as I will show here, linguistic and comparative studies between Kikuyu culture and that of 18th Dynasty Egypt tell a different story.
Leakey’s list of the Daughters of Mumi from the first born to the last born
1.Wanjirũ - Anjirũ
2. Wambũi - Ambũi
3. Njeri - Aceera
4. Wanjikũ - Anjiku
5. Nyambura - Ambura or Ethaga
6. Wairimũ - Airimũ or Agathigia or Aicakamũyũ
7. Waithĩra - Athirandũ
8. Wangarĩ- Angarĩ or Aithe-Kahuno
9. Wangũi - Angũi or Aithiegeni
Gathigira’s list of clans
1. Wanjirũ - Anjirũ
2. Wambũi - Ambũi
3. Wanjeri - Aceera
4. Wanjuku (probably a spelling mistake for Wanjikũ) - Agacikũ
5. Wambura - Ethaga or Akiuru
6. Wairimũ - Agathigia (Airimũ)
7. Wangeci - Aithĩrandũ
8. Wangarĩ - head of the Angarĩ or Aithe Kahuno clan
9. Wangũi - Aithiegeni
10. Wamũyũ - Aicakamũyũ
It is significant here that the meaning of the 10th clan is 'of the spirit.' Not like the rest who are human. Kenyatta infered that Gĩkũyũ, the founder formed the tenth clan. Note that the English word for TEN and the Kikuyu word TENE for long ago may have the same root. The English word AGO and the kikuyu word AGO (meaning diviner priest) may also have the same root.
Who were the Kikuyu?
The Kikuyu are classified linguistically as Highland Bantus together with the Kamba, Kuria and Gusii, Embu, Tharaka, and Meru of Kenya. The latter three are classified as Kikuyu by this researcher due to their common origins. The other Highland Bantus in East Africa are the Meru (Tanzanian), Segeju, Sonjo, Ikoma, Chagga, Gweno, Shashi, Zanaki and Nguruimi of Tanzania. They are all of the Benue-Congo language division of the Niger Congo family. In particular, the Chagga have an as yet unexplored affinity with the Kikuyu. According to traditions, the Ethaga clan of the Kikuyu either came from or represents the Chagga.
Kikuyu proper has three main divisions. These are Gaki (Nyeri), Metumi (Muranga) and Kabete or Kiambu Kikuyu. We use the term Kikuyu because as the anglicised form of the original - Gĩkũyũ – it has gained widespread academic use. Gĩkũyũ was not only a language but also the name of a patriarch ancestor.
The first written mention of Kikuyu in modern times must be by Ludwig Krapf when he made two journeys to Ukambani in the 1840s. Before that, the Kikuyu had lived in isolation for more than one thousand years, with little interaction with the outside world. It is to be expected that some Kikuyu travelers did join their Akamba friends to and from the coast on trading expeditions. This explains why the Kikuyu, despite the isolation, did not lag behind in incorporating new crops into their agriculture. Examples of these crops are cassava, maize and tobacco, which were unknown outside the Americas before the Spanish conquests, and subsequent Portuguese presence at the East African Coast.
Where did the Kikuyu come from?
The Kikuyu have several myths of origin. For details on these myths. However, they do carry some fragments of truth, which are important to the keen observer. The Myth of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, the father and mother of all the Kikuyu is the most reliable of all the legends told by the kikuyu about their origins.
From comparative studies, I have deduced that the nucleus of the people called Kikuyu today came from the land of Ancient Egypt, during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. They used the Ethiopia route to get to Mount Kenya. According to evidence from power handing over ceremony described below, it took less than thirty (30) years for the first group to get to Mount Kenya region. It took others more than one hundred years to join their kin. This explains the variety of dialects, including Meru, now a distinct language. The reader will be taken through the existing evidence of this migration. During this migration, the Nyeri and Murang'a Kikuyu were separated for three generations which resulted in the last three ruling generations to have two different names each as will be seen below. Once they had settled in the safety of the forests at the foot of the sacred mountain, the Kikuyu went to great pains to re-craft their origins and to ensure that intruders were kept at bay in a siege mentality that lasted over one thousand years.
The following questions will further help to understand the secrets given below:
1. The Kikuyu say Tene to mean 'Long Ago.' Is this Tene the suffix in Akhenaten?
2. The Meru who had a confederacy with the Kikuyu say KARE to mean Long Ago. Is this the suffix in Smenkhare, the co-regent of Akhenaten?
3. The Kikuyu call a Woman a Mutumia and an Olive tree a Mutamaiyo. Do these words have the same root as Mutemwiya, Akhenaten’s Grandmother? We also know with certainty that the Olive tree was sacred in Ancient Egypt.
That said, let us look at two ceremonies, one in Egypt and the other in Kikuyu.
The Hebsed Festival or Jubilee
Egyptologists suggest that the Egyptian Hebsed started soon after 3100 BC when King Menes unified Egypt. It is likely that it was a much older tradition, taken into Egypt from the south where King Menes had come from. His commemorative palette called the palette of Narmer has two mythical long necked animals. Routledge described a long necked animal, a Ndamathia, living in the Mathioya River which has a sacred feather in its tail. He associated this animal to a ceremony of the Kikuyu similar to the Hebsed called Ituĩka in Kikuyu.
On the left is a male pharaoh's dress, on the right is a Kikuyu leader's wife in ceremonial dress (from a picture of Wananga's wife)
The Kikuyu Calendar
The Kikuyu used a lunar calendar by following the cycles of the moon. They therefore had twelve months, each with its own name, based on the activity or expected weather. We can see therefore, that through the lunar month, they arrived at a year that was similar to the Egyptian year of 360 days.
A group of youths (both male and female) initiated into adulthood in a specific year was given a name that reminded them of a major event in that year, such as famine or the first time the aeroplane was cited. When the colonialist came with the Pax Britannica, it was possible to correlate known events and the names of the initiation groups to arrive at specific years. Cagnolo of the Consolata fathers was able to get Initiation names to as far back as 1840. It follows then that all the initiation names, marking major events in the history of the Kikuyu in the past, beyond 1840 have been forgotten. We shall never know for instance, what the initiation at departure of Egypt or at arrival in Kikuyu land was. However, another system, that of naming ‘ruling generations’ after every thirty years, gives the precise time that the Kikuyu identified themselves as a unique group in Egypt, the time they left Egypt and the possible time that they arrived in the Mount Kenya area. This is thanks to a list of nine names that are repeated in a cycle starting in the days of Pharaoh Thothmes III. Since the ancient Egyptians used the cycles of the ‘dog star’ or ‘Sirius’ to reckon the 30 year cycle, it should follow that the Kikuyu seers (Arathi) were familiar with ‘star gazing’ and used the same star to determine the end of a thirty year cycle.
The Word Arathi – Star gazer, has three morphs: A (a prefix to turn a word into plural); Ra (probably the sun God Ra): Thi (archaic form for the word ‘go.’ This form is still in use by the Akamba. What the Arathi do is kuratha – to foresee, the correct translation of Arathi in ancient times was – those who go with Ra, and since Ra was the sun, these journeys took place in the sky.
Kikuyu language is agglutinative. It has the tendency of forming new words by fusing two or more different words together to give a new meaning. By comparative studies, we are able to see and extract fused archaic forms.
A Kikuyu youth wearing the 'peculiar triangular apron' used in the gichukya dance
The Ituĩka: a Kikuyu ceremony similar to the Hebsed of Egypt
The Kikuyu were ruled by a generation of elders. When the ‘generation in power’ reached the age of retirement, the ‘generation in waiting’ paid fees in goats, and an ‘Ituĩka’ ceremony was organized. This happened every 30 years. A cycle of nine names was used to identify each ruling generation and since it was a fixed cycle, the generation in waiting knew in advance what their name was. Below is a list of all the nine Ituĩka names:
1. Mathaathi
2. Chyera (Ciira)
3. Ndemi
4. Iregi
5. Maina
6. Mwangi
7. Choka (muirungu)
8. Chororo (murigaru)
9. Chuma (manduti)
10. ??? (I will advance a theory why there must have been a tenth name)
Note that after Mwangi, the other generations have a different name in brackets. This bracketed names were from the Nyeri Kikuyu, an indication that a separation occurred but the ceremonies still took place according a traditional reckoning after every 30 years. Since each ceremony commemorated an event, the separated groups had, as is expected, differing experiences and events to name after the ceremonies.
There were two names however that were generic, meaning that whichever of the nine names a generation carried from the above list, they also had of the two – a sort of surname. A Generation was either a Mwangi or a Maina, regardless of the real generation name. Since Maina and Mwangi are alos on the list, it means that they commemorate very important occasions in the history of the tribe. In other words, the Mwangi begat the Maina, and the Maina begat the Mwangi. This will be clear when the reader has gone through the entire text.
In all probability, the Ituĩka names were given to the Kikuyu when in Egypt and after departure from Egypt, every 30 years according to an Egyptian tradition called the Hebsed. This word Hebsed translates to “the becoming” in English, the same meaning that “Ituĩka” gives in Kikuyu. All the Generations that appear before Mwangi in the list below are believed by this author to have corresponding Hebsed festivals celebrated in Egypt. The names of generations in the power-handing-over ceremony give us an idea of how many years the Kikuyu took to get to Mount Kenya regions as follows:
The triangular apron worn by Akhenaten's servants
The Kikuyu Ruling Generations and their Egyptian connections
(1)Mathaathi – this was during the reign of Thothmes III. ‘Ma’ is a prefix and the root is Thaathi for Thoth. This is the earliest period in the collective memory of the Kikuyu. Thothmes III (sometimes spelled as Tahutmes, or Thutmosis) was a pharaoh in the 18th Dynasty. For the first 22 years of his reign, Thothmes was co-regent with his stepmother, Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh ever. He is recorded to have ruled between 1504-1450 BC. Hatshepsut who was also called Makare, celebrated a Hebsed (the equivalent of an Ituĩka) as recorded on an obelisk. It is likely that 30 year jubilee celebration merely fell in her reign and was not of her own making as some Egyptologists have theorised. It is around this time that a group of East African men and women were acquired by Hatshepsut. The women were called the Angui (an archaic Bantu word for leopard). Makare, Hatshepsut’s other name meant ‘leopard’ and it would appear that these women were ‘her property.’ The Men probably took the interim name Mathaathi, before taking on the name Gĩkũyũ when Thothmes was in full power. ‘Sycamore’ was a Pharaonic title besides the fact that sycamores were sacred trees. A sycamore tree is called Mũkũyũ in Kikuyu. The present Angũi Clan of the Kikuyu is also called Aithiegeni (which is archaic Kikuyu for ‘those in a foreign land’). It is noteworthy that the Kikuyu call a leopard Ngare and not Ngoi as do many other Bantu groups. They seem to have adopted the Egyptian word for it. The Mathaathi generation gave birth to Chyera (Ciira).
About the God Thoth – “... In another aspect [besides as a scribe] Thoth was the heart of Ra - the heart was the seat of Intelligence, and writing was the physical manifestation of Intelligence" (Edward L. B. Terrace and Henry G Fischer, 1970).
(2) Chyera (Ciira). The root of this word is the verb, Ciara – give birth. Scholars agree that this generation signifies excessive growth of the tribe. I suggest that this growth took place after the fortunes of a small captive group changed for the better. It was understandable that Hatshepsut, as the first female Pharaoh in Egypt, had given her captives and servants such freedom as was not available to their lot before. This is especially so for the women, and we can understand how at one time, according to legend, Kikuyu women ruled their men. It's interesting that the Kikuyu women adopted some items of clothing that were the preserve of men in Egypt. Look closely at the images presented in this hub.
A Hebsed was likely to have been celebrated during the reign of Thothmes III who ruled for 54 years, (26 as a co-regent). A woman is called ‘mutumia’ in Kikuyu and it seems women were associated with Olive trees. If the sycamore was the ‘Sun’, then the Olive was the ‘Moon.’ This generation gave birth to Ndemi.
(3) Ndemi – This generation is associated with writing (Ndemwa – letters and numbers) from the verb tema – to cut. Some writers have associated them with clearing fields for cultivation but that cannot be true when other evidence that is shown below is taken into consideration. Letters in Egypt were cut or incised in stone. When Thothmes III eventually took over from Hatshepsut, he put everybody to a lot of work on his monuments. It is reported that almost all the great temples existing in Upper Egypt at the time were enlarged while he ordered the building of new ones. This required artisans to work the stones and to assist the scribes in writing the hieroglyphics. Even if one did not actually write on stone, the event would be so important that everyone would want to be associated with the ‘cutting and incising’. Thothmes III extended the borders of Egypt to include the lands that we know as Ethiopia, Sudan, Arabia, Armenia and Kurdistan. Thothmes III was succeeded by his son Amenhotep II. It is likely that a Hebsed was celebrated after Amenhotep II had taken over from his father. His mother was the famous Mutemwiya – the great Olive. An Olive tree is called mutamaiyu in Kikuyu. It was the sacred tree for Kikuyu women. The Ndemi generation gave birth to Iregi- the rebels.
(4) Iregi – This means ‘rebels’ in Kikuyu. This generation is associated with the rebellion against Amun by Amenhotep iv (Maina) who changed his name to Akhenaten (Tene) when he took over in.1350. The Hebsed was likely to have been celebrated when Akhenaten was co- regent with his father, Amenhotep III. The rebellion was against the worship of the state religion which had a stranglehold on the population. Note that a State House is called ‘Thingira wa Iregi’ – house of the rebels in the Kikuyu language. This title for the ruler’s house was initiated by Akhenaten, who was the Gikũyũ of Kikuyu migration from Egypt. The priests of Amun were rich and influential, a situation he endeavored to change by decreeing that none should be worshiped but the sun God Aten whose rays were always shown holding the Ankh – symbol of life. It implies that the generation sided with his actions. Akhenaten went to great lengths to erase inscription with Amun on monuments, acts that no doubt infuriated the nobles and priests. The Iregi gave birth to the Maina who were so named in memory of Akhenaten whose religious belief they had now adopted. Maina is from Amun in Amenhotep – Akhenaten’s name before the change.
Akhenaten's servant and a Tigania warrior, both wearing the triangular apron
(5) Maina – This name is the first of the Generic names. It must be marker of a momentous stage in the history of the Kikuyu. I have deduced that this generation is derived from Akhenaten’s original name Amenhotep IV and though it is a grim reminder of the banished God and his priests it is associated more with the peace that reigned in the land – the Amarna period. Despite the fact that Petrie, an early Egyptologist stated that there is no record of Akhenaten’s celebration of a Hebsed, he believed that it must have taken place. The fact that the Kikuyu have this Maina that precedes Mwangi is testimony that it did take place. The name Maina shares the same roots with the Kiswahili word Amani meaning peace. Egyptologists are agreed that the Amarna period was a peaceful era in the 18th Dynasty. This Maina generation gave birth to Mwangi.
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References
1. Aldred, C., 1968 Akhnenaten Thames & Hudson London
2. Cagnolo, C., 1933, The Akikuyu, Their customs, Traditions and Folklore, Mission Printing school, Nyeri.
3. Collier, J., 1970, In search of Akhenaten ,Ward Lock Limited - London
4. Dundas, Charles, 1968, Kilimanjaro and its People, Frank Cass & co. Ltd, London.
6. Giles, F. J., 1970, Ikhnaton: Legend and History, Hutchinson, London.
7. Kenyatta, J., 1938, Facing Mount Kenya, Kenway Publications, Nairobi.
8. Krapf, J. Lewis., 1968. Missionary Researches and Travels No. 2. Frank Cass, London.
9. Leakey, L.S.B., 1977, The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, Vol I, II & III, Academic Press, London.
10. Middleton, J. & Kershaw G., 1965, The Central Tribes of the North-Eastern Bantu, (including the Embu, Meru, Mbere, Chuka. Mwimbi, Tharaka, and the Kamba of Kenya), International Africa Institute, London.
Disclaimer
The information presented in this article is intended for educational and cultural enrichment purposes. While care has been taken to accurately capture Kikuyu culture and traditions, this article does not claim to represent every scholarly interpretation.
Readers are encouraged to consult additional sources or native speakers for deeper insights.
Kikuyu Culture & History respects the diversity within Gĩkũyũ-speaking communities and welcomes thoughtful dialogue. If you notice any inaccuracies or have suggestions, feel free to contact us at kenatene@gmail.com.
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