MAAT HAD BEEN THE supreme goddess ever since she created herself and the universe. Now, under patriarchy, the need arose for the supreme divine office to go to a male god. It was thus that Maat became Maa.

If, for its part, the geru in geru-maa is cognate with the Hindu-Sikh guru (the supreme teacher), then geru-maa can be translated as "Teacher of Righteousness." This is engrossing. For Genesis identifies the "Teacher of Righteousness" with the Canaanite priest-king Melchizedek of pre-Israelite Jerusalem.

The Maasai are likely to have come from around Napata and Meroe, the seat of a celebrated Nilotic state where, at Nag Hammadi, ancient gospels have recently been discovered which connects the authors with the Melchizedekian order to which Jesus belonged.

All this may indicate why the worshippers of Enkai called themselves Maasai. Cynthia Salvadori translates the word Maasai as "people of Maa speech." But that begs the question: What exactly is "Maa speech?" An answer that suggests itself is that Maa is another name for Enkai.

Moreover, if Enkai is cognate with the Sumerian Enki, the Canaanite Enoch, Genesis's Cain, the Andean Inca, the Mexican Chanes, to this list we can add the ancient Western African kingdom of Ghana and, in modern Ghana, the Akan.

Robert Graves in The Greek Myths and Robert Temple in The Sirius Mystery report that Canaan is only a Hebrew corruption of Aganor - the Ugandan who became the eponymous father of the Canaanites - a name which closely resembles Ghana.

They and Cheik Anta Diop - the great Senegalese archaeo-historian - demonstrate a direct cultural, mythological, linguistic and blood link between Cush, Egypt, Crete, Arcadia, Thessaly, Armenia, Lemnos, Canaan, Garamantia (ancient Libya), Dogon, Bambara, Wolof and Akan.

Did the Maasai carry over the Maa legend with them to Kenya - just as the Sumerians and Syria's Mandaeans took it from Maagan or Maadai (their respective words for Egypt) and just as the Phoenicians took Cain's legend to Central America?

Do maagan, maadai and Maasai mean the same thing, the land of origin along the sacred Nile? What we can stress is the moral nature of Maat and Maa, whose essence was Charity.