TWIL #23: From Independent Woman to Amen/Amun.
This Week I Learned - Insights, observations, and the stuff that made me go “Whoa!”
Every Sunday, I share a few of my learnings, reflections, and curiosities from the week. Things I stumbled upon, things I questioned, things that made me look twice. It’s not about being right or complete… it’s about noticing, wondering, and learning out loud.
Thanks for reading. I hope it sparks something for you too.
Lilith: The first woman we were never told about
I was listening to Kunststof on Radio 1 here in the Netherlands when actress Saskia Temmink mentioned her new play. It’s about Lilith, the first wife of Adam. The name stopped me. I’d never heard of her. Not really. Like most people, I grew up with the story of Adam and Eve. The garden, the rib, the apple, the shame. But this wasn’t Eve. This was someone else. Someone who came before.
According to some of the oldest Jewish texts, ones that didn’t make it into most modern Bibles, Lilith was the first woman. Not created from Adam’s rib, but from the same dust as Adam himself. Equal. Whole. She wasn’t made to be a companion or helper. She was: in full. And when Adam tried to assert power over her, she refused. She demanded equality, not subservience. And when it became clear she wouldn't be treated as an equal, she left. Walked out of the garden. Walked out of the story.
From the Alphabet of Ben Sira:
“When the Almighty created the first man, Adam, He created a woman from the earth, as He had created Adam himself. He called her Lilith.
They immediately began to quarrel.
She said, ‘I will not lie below you,’ and he said, ‘I will not lie below you, but above you. For you are fit to be below me, and I above you.’
She responded, ‘We are both equal, because we were both created from the earth.’
But they would not listen to each other.
When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name of God and flew away into the air.”
Not for sin. Not for shame. For independence.
She was an equal woman. A free woman. A woman who said no.
But… then came new stories around her.
The myths that followed
After Lilith left the garden, she didn’t disappear. Not entirely. Instead, she was rewritten: transformed, twisted, turned into something else. Over time, the legends built up, casting her in roles designed to frighten, to shame, to silence.
Here are just some of the stories that grew around her name:
Demon of the Night: In medieval Jewish folklore, Lilith was said to steal babies in the night and seduce men in their dreams.
Mother of Demons: Some tales claim she coupled with Satan and gave birth to countless monsters.
Serpent Woman: She was associated with snakes, temptation, and chaos.
Wild Witch: Painted with wings, talons, and tangled hair, she became a creature of the margins, never welcome in the civilized world.
The First Feminist (in modern times): Reclaimed by writers, artists, and activists, she became a symbol of resistance, selfhood, and unapologetic womanhood.
Too much
In every version of these later stories, Lilith is punished for being too much:
too loud
too proud
too sexual
too powerful
too equal
She was not a helper. She was not obedient. She would not bend.
And for that, she became a warning.
A curious reconsideration
If Lilith was created equal, what does it say that her story was buried?
Why were we given Eve, who was made from Adam, but not Lilith, who stood beside him?
What kinds of women are written out of stories… and why?
What fears do we project onto women who walk away, who refuse to be second?
And what might change if Lilith were restored to the beginning. Not as a demon, but as a fully human woman who simply said: no?
Perhaps she didn’t disappear at all.
Perhaps she was waiting for us to start asking better questions.
It’s not about color. It’s about culture.
I came across a short video of Denzel Washington being interviewed, and something he said stayed with me. He was asked about the importance of having a black director for a film about a black story. His answer was calm, but it landed hard.
“It’s not about color. It’s about culture.”
He explained that Steven Spielberg didn’t have to be Jewish to direct Schindler’s List. It wasn’t about race… it was about understanding. About connection. About telling a story from the inside, not just the outside. After that he gave an example “We all know what it is when a hot comb hits your head on a sunday morning. That is a cultural difference, not a race difference.”
That resonated.
Because so often today, we rush to match identity with identity. A black story must have a black director. A woman’s story must be told by a woman. A queer character must be played by someone queer. And yes, these concerns come from a real place. Representation matters. History is full of people being written out of their own stories.
But Denzel’s words offer a deeper way of seeing. Culture isn’t just race or gender or orientation. Culture is what shapes you. What you carry. What you’ve taken time to understand. It’s the difference between having an identity and truly knowing a world.
That’s why his answer resonates so deeply. Because it reframes the question. It moves us away from appearance and into understanding. It asks not, “Who looks like the people in this story?” but “Who sees them?”
That’s where the power is.
Not in color alone. But in culture.
Not just in identity. But in insight.
Amen and Amun: Are they connected?
I was watching a documentary on ancient Egypt when something caught my ear. The narrator was speaking about Amun, one of the great Egyptian gods, and it made me pause. The name sounded almost identical to Amen: a word used in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic prayers to this day.
It made me wonder: Are they connected?
Here’s what we know.
Amen in the Hebrew Tradition
The word Amen (אָמֵן) appears in the Hebrew Bible and is rooted in the Semitic language family. It comes from the Hebrew verb ’aman, meaning “to support” or “to be faithful.” Its earliest known use in a religious context is in the Book of Numbers (likely written between 1400–1200 BCE), where people respond to blessings or curses with Amen to affirm their agreement.
Over time, the word became a standard closing in Jewish prayers. Early Christians adopted it into their liturgy, and it later became part of Islamic prayer traditions as well. Across these faiths, “Amen” essentially means: so be it, truly, or let it be so.
Amun in Ancient Egypt
Amun (also spelled Amen, Amon, or Amun) was one of the most important gods in ancient Egypt. He first appears in texts from around 2000 BCE, during the Middle Kingdom period. His name means “the hidden one” in ancient Egyptian.
Amun rose to prominence in Thebes, and by the time of the New Kingdom (starting around 1550 BCE), he was worshipped as Amun-Ra: a fusion with the sun god Ra. This made him the king of the gods, associated with creation, wind, air, and the unseen.
The worship of Amun remained central until around 1000 BCE, when Egypt’s political and religious power began to shift.
Are they the same?
Linguistically? No.
Hebrew and Ancient Egyptian are from different branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and the similarity in sound between Amen and Amun appears to be a coincidence.
Historically? Unlikely.
Amen appears in Hebrew texts that postdate the earliest known worship of Amun, but there’s no direct evidence that the Israelites adopted the word from Egyptian religion.
That said, it’s important to remember that the Israelites lived in Egypt for centuries (as the Exodus story recounts), and cultural exchange, linguistic or symbolic, is always possible. But in this case, scholars generally agree there is no proven link between the Hebrew Amen and the Egyptian god Amun beyond phonetic similarity.
As the Mythbusters would say: Myth busted!
