I read somewhere on the internet that some Luhyas came from Egypt and so did some Baganda and oba Banyoro. I thought all Bantus came from Congo or Cameroon. Speaking of Congo, I read somewhere that the Ethiopia referred to in the bible included the area stretching from the Congo basin.
Another mind boggling thing I read on the internet is about the Wanga (a tribe of the Luhya). I read that the Wanga came from Egypt as part of the migration that settled in Kampala area that formed the Buganda Kingdom. A muganda Prince called Kaminyi, who was Kabaka Mwanga I's cousin and Kabaka Mawanda's son, fled to Tiriki in Western Kenya. (Incidentally, I lived in Tiriki with my parents for 8 years) The Prince fled because as the king's cousin, he posed a threat to the reigning monarch.
On reaching Western Kenya, the Prince became a ruler and was succeeded by his son Wanga who established the Wanga Kingdom with the title of Nabongo in the 18th century.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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5 comments:
eehhh mukwano ate this rate my decendant misht be form south Korea...lol....hey hun how are you..?
socks i claim definatly...lol
Indeed. I'm fine. You?
You like these things. :o)
The Bantu of Uganda today are not purely Bantu. They are strongly mixed with the Nilotics who lived here before them. Before the Bunyoro-Kitara empire was to reign supreme, the Luo invaders colonised Bunyoro. (Hence the many cultural similarities, such as pet names that have Luo meanings, and the introduction of things like the drum and the adungu, which are Nilotic inventions. These interlacustrine Bantu cultures are drum-centric - "a drum is sounded by the new king, to signal the start of a new reign [...]" - and that must be an inheritance all of Uganda's Bantu have from their Nilotic forebears.)
But where the Bantu came from ultimately was not the Congo Basin or Cameroon, which don't suffer population pressure (because they've never had it, enough of it to trigger migration). They came from the Sahara, when it ceased to be able to support the numbers. They also went there from some other place that had a civilisation (with things like irrigation) to sustain a huge population, until that civilisation collapsed, say like Ancient Egypt.
Ultimately, then, most Bantu we have here are due to such ancient peoples as Nilotics and Ghanaians and Malians and Egyptians. The Congolese are like modern Bantu - they too have just arrived recently, with the Ugandan Bantu.
There is a claim that the person referred to as Kintu, the first Muganda, the first person, the first King, was descended from Abyssinia, which is modern Ethiopia. See here.
Abyssinia would have been referred to as Egypt for long. Indeed, even the area up to either Lake Tana in Kenya, or Jinja in Uganda (source of the Nile, depending on how far they knew that to be - likely the former) was referred to as Egypt. This chapter is about Nilotic peoples. I've seen the "smooth skin" part (which the Nilotics certainly have!) translated as "dark-skinned" in the Good News Bible, which the Nilotics also have. :o)
When the Bible has "Ethiopia", it variously means "Abyssinia", "Africa" (the land mass), and "Sub-Saharan Africa", or Black Africa. The other word for Ethiopia was "Cush", which is Hebrew for "Black". That would, therefore, be Black Africa that is meant by Ethiopia, even though the text may point at some particular part of this Africa (in the same way that we say "Washington has re-assured Tehran [...]").
See this page; many uses of Ethiopia are translations of "Cush", which means "Black". (Interesting verse using the word "Ethiopian" while referring to any Black person.)
I don't know about that Lunya thing.
I agree with you on the nilotic mixture. Why, even the name Ccwa is a Luo name.
However, according to this link http://www.buganda.com/kintu.htm#Ggulu Kintu the first king of Buganda and Kintu the first person on earth are not the same. It appears that when Kato established himself as king, he gave himself the name Kintu, a name that he knew the Baganda associated with the father of all people. Thus Kintu was in effect trying to establish his legitimacy as ruler of the Baganda by associating himself with the legendary first person in Buganda. It is for this reason that he also named his principal wife Nambi.
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