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At the beginning of the Berber (Amazigh) civilisation, there is a people, then there are the words, then the pictures of animals and other means of living things, facts of early lives drawn on cave walls several thousands of years B.C Many of those rocking engravings exist on several prehistoric landmarks. throughout the North-West of Africa, the Amazigh land, Tamazgha that covers a vast and mountainous land and desert from Canaries Islands to Siwa (Egypt).
Unlike the Pharaoh culture and others of the eastern part of Nil river, the Berber symbols, Tifinagh, its signs have no correlation with ancient Egypt’s alphabetical root, from which the Phoenician, Judeo Persian or Greco-Latin inspired to create their letters.

Tifinagh derived naturally from the early farming tools, from sea products, from sand games and

from stars (Cosmology).

Strong evident confirmations often anthropomorphic, linguistics still present in the Berber mythic universe and are characterised by a “cosmic-natural� organisation reflecting the order of cosmic power, the root that mirrors as well as the order of power of man and power of woman, like two opposite poles.

In the Berber philosophy, the language is the tongue of expression of identification and of recording, this linguistics with all its original particularities on each existent element of all universes has an opposite, for example, the Sun has its female and its male, Tafookt, and Afook; the Moon, Ayour and Tayourt; the Star, Itri and Titrit; the Mountain, Adrar and Tadrart; the Tree, Argan and Targant; The Beard, Amar and Tamart etc…

Except the sky and the earth, Iguinna and Akal are males that are contrary to enigmatic Chinese philosophy language of Yang as the creator of masculine and the Yin as maternal of feminine.

In the Berber existentialism philosophy, the evolution depends on the movement of the stars not of the man nor of the woman, probably, because of this state of cosmic consciousness that the Berber past civilisation has left few monumental prints like old Egyptians, Tibetans, or Khmers and Incas.

There is no civilisation without its specific characteristics, such as art, literature and music to define its presence in time and in space.

Amazigh cultural civilisation has its typical art and symbols as well it has its endemic music that concretises its history and characterise its personality.

The survival of Amazigh language and its cultural identity was due to Berber motherhood through oral transmissions to children, at the same way of keeping up to now the existence of symbolic (writing), Tifinagh, through the craft works of tapestry, jewellery, tattoos and pottery.

The other factor that contributed to the existence of Amazigh language and its art in the past as in today, is the Argan tree, the Berber living prehistoric fossil tree, from which derived Tashelhite vocabulary, especially from the different steps of extraction of argan oil.

Those tools and technical methods are stilling the same in use in our era of 3rd millennium.

Tamazgha s indigenous artists, writers and musicians through their creative works that reflect the trilogy of Amazigh culture by depicting a people, an art, a symbol and a sound, is more than just a form of expression, it is a media way of recording realistically the Berber traditions and it is also a media way of communication and transmission of Berber cultural heritage to future generations and in order to keep alive one of the oldest civilisations on earth, Tamazight.

Yet despite all the efforts that were made to preserve Tamazight cultural artistic heritage, this language is endangered and possibly to fade away with all its arts because its creative minds are constantly marginalized by the totalitarian governing systems and discriminated by the judeo-arabo-islamism politics.

Abdallah Aourik

source: Emazighen.com

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