The Bantu mythology is the system of myths and legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

s of the Bantu peoples of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. Although Bantu peoples account for several hundred different ethnic group

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

s, there is a high degree of homogeneity in Bantu cultures and mythologies

Mythologies

Mythologies is a book by Roland Barthes, published in 1957. It is a collection of essays taken from Les Lettres nouvelles, examining the tendency of contemporary social value systems to create modern myths...

, just as in Bantu languages

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...

. The phrase "Bantu mythology" usually refers to the common, recurring themes that are found in all or most Bantu cultures.

God

All Bantus traditionally believe in a supreme God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

. The nature of God is often only vaguely defined, although he may be associated with the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

, or the oldest of all ancestors

Veneration of the dead

Veneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, often family members, have a continued existence and/or possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living...

, or have other specifications. Most names of God include the Bantu particle ng (nk), that is related to the sky

Sky

The sky is the part of the atmosphere or outer space visible from the surface of any astronomical object. It is difficult to define precisely for several reasons. During daylight, the sky of Earth has the appearance of a pale blue surface because the air scatters the sunlight. The sky is sometimes...

; some examples are Mulungu

Mulungu

Mulungu is a supreme creator god of the Nyamwezi people of Tanzania in eastern Africa. Despite being the creator and protector of the world, he is distant and has little contact with humanity. It is said that he once lived on Earth, but when someone set fire to the landscape he asked a spider to...

(Yao people and others), Mungu (Swahili people

Swahili people

The Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group and culture found in East Africa, mainly in the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya, Tanzania and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil,...

), Unkulunkulu (Zulu people), Ruhanga

Ruhanga

Ruhanga features in Bantu mythology as the remote creator and sky-God, recognised among the Bahuma, the Nyoro, the Tooro, the Chiga, the Bambwa, the Banyoro, and the Ankore. The Bahuma further recognise him as the arbiter of life, sickness, and death...

(Nyoro and others), and Ngai

Ngai

Ngai is the supreme God in the religions of the Kamba, Kikuyu and Maasai nationalities of Kenya....

(Maasai and others). In many traditions, in fact, God is supposed live in the skies, much like in western mythologies and religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

s; there are also traditions that locate God on some high mountain (as in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

), for example the Kirinyaga

Kirinyaga

Kirinyaga may refer to:*Mount Kenya*Kirinyaga District in Kenya*Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick...

 mountain for Kikuyu people.

There are several Bantu myths that are intended to explain, or that elaborate on, the distance between God and men, i.e., the sky and the earth. In many Bantu creation myths the sky and the earth used to be closer to each other, and were separated by God because of some disturbance caused by men. For example, there's a Bantu myth of God being disturbed by the pestles

Mortar and pestle

A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances . The pestle is a heavy bat-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone...

 handled by women, that would hit His belly when raised up, and another one where God is offended by the smoke of man-made fires. There are also myths about men trying to climb up to God's place (e.g., by climbing up a very high tree, or up a dangling rope).

God is almost never described as the Creator of all things, as in most Bantu mythologies the universe is eternal and has no beginning. Animals are also a part of this eternal universe. While not its creator, God is intimately related to the universe; animals are sometimes referred to as "His people", and in some of the myths about God moving away from men (for example, the one mentioned above about the smoke of man-made fires) it is clear that God's discontent with men has to do with their habit of manipulating and corrupting the natural world. Amongst other, the Yao, the Ashanti and the Maasai believe that God is upset about mankind mistreating His people.

In traditional Bantu religions, anyway, God is far and detached from earth and mankind. As a consequence, very few religious practices, if any, are intended to worship him. This traditional attitude of Bantu belief systems has been modified, to various degrees and in various ways, by the advent of Christianism

Christianism

Christianism had various definitions over the years. It was originally defined as "the Christian religion" or "the Christian world". In recent years, Christianism has also been used as a descriptive term of Christian fundamentalists, mostly in the United States, for the ideology of the Christian...

 (or Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

), as the God of Christians and Muslims has been equated to the Bantu supreme God. Mungu has thus become a God that cares about humanity and that it makes sense to worship and pray to.

Creation

While in Bantu mythology the universe and the animals are eternal, so that there are no creation myths about their origin, the opposite holds for mankind. In many Bantu myths, the first man was born from a plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

: for example, he came from a bamboo

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 stem in Zulu and Tonga

Tonga

Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...

 mythology, and from a "Omumborombonga" tree in Herero mythology. Other traditions have the first men come out of a cave

Cave

A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

 or a hole in the ground. People that mainly live on cattle

Cattle

Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...

 farming usually believe that men and cattle appeared on earth together.

It can be noted that, as is the case with many mythologies, Bantu mythologies about the creation of man are often limited to describing the origin of certain human groups, rather than all of humanity. For example, most Bantu peoples that coexist with bushmen

Bushmen

The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...

 do not include these in their creation myths (i.e., bushmen are considered a part of the eternal universe rather than a part of mankind).

Death

Most Bantu cultures share a common myth about the origin of death

Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

, involving a chameleon

Chameleon

Chameleons are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, the possession by many of a...

. According to this myth, God sent the chameleon to announce to men that they would never die. The chameleon went on his mission, but he walked slowly and stopped along the way to eat. Some time after the chameleon had left, a lizard went to announce to men that they would die. Being much quicker than the chameleon, the lizard arrived first, thus establishing the mortal nature of man. As a consequence of this myth, both chameleons and lizards are often considered bad omens in Bantu cultures.

Depending on local traditions, there are different explanations for the "double message" of the chameleon and lizard. In some cases, God sends both the chameleon and the lizard, with their respective omens, intentionally committing manking's destiny to the outcome of their race. In some other cases, the lizard eavesdrops the orders God gives to the chameleon, and chooses to bring the opposite message out of envy. In still other cultures, after having sent the chameleon, God changes his mind as a consequence of the bad behaviour of mankind. Missionaries have often adapted the myth of the chameleon to evangelize

Evangelization

Evangelization is that process in the Christian religion which seeks to spread the Gospel and the knowledge of the Gospel throughout the world. It can be defined as so:-The birth of Christian evangelization:...

 Bantu Africans; the chameleon, who brings the good news of eternal life

Immortality

Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

 to mankind, is thus equated to Jesus Christ.

Spirits

In most African cultures, including Bantu cultures, veneration of the dead

Veneration of the dead

Veneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, often family members, have a continued existence and/or possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living...

 plays a prominent role. The spirits of the dead are believed to linger around and influence the world of the living. This spiritual existence is usually not considered eternal; the spirits of the dead live on until there's someone who remembers them. As a consequence, kings and heroes, who are celebrated by oral tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

, live for centuries, while the spirit of common people may vanish in the turn of a few generations.

The dead communicate with the living in different ways; for example, they talk to them in dream

Dream

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...

s, send omen

Omen

An omen is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change...

s, or can be addressed by specially gifted seer

Divination

Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...

s. If they take any visible shape, it is often that of some animal (most likely a snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

, a bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 or a mantis

Mantis

Mantis is the common name of any insect in the order Mantodea, also commonly known as praying mantises. The word itself means "prophet" in Latin and Greek...

).

The living, through clairvoyants and seers, may address the dead in order to receive advice or ask for favours. If a spirit takes offence in something done by a living person, he may cause illness

Illness

Illness is a state of poor health. Illness is sometimes considered another word for disease. Others maintain that fine distinctions exist...

 or misfortune to that person; in that case, a clairvoyant may help that person to amend his mistake and pacify the angry dead. Catastrophes

Disaster

A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...

, such as famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

 or war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

, may be the consequence of serious misbehavior of the whole community.

As is the case with other mythologies, Bantu cultures often locate the world of the dead underground. Many Bantu cultures have myths and legends about living people that somehow manages to enter the world of the dead (kuzimi in Swahili); this may happen by chance to someone who is trying to hunt a porcupine

Porcupine

Porcupines are rodents with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that defend or camouflage them from predators. They are indigenous to the Americas, southern Asia, and Africa. Porcupines are the third largest of the rodents, behind the capybara and the beaver. Most porcupines are about long, with...

 or other animal inside its burrow

Burrow

A burrow is a hole or tunnel dug into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of shelter against predation and exposure to the elements, so the burrowing way of life is quite popular among the...

. Some legends are about heroes who willingly enter the underground world in some kind of quest

Quest

In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...

; examples are Mpobe (in Baganda

Baganda

The Ganda are an ethnic group native to Buganda, a subnational kingdom within Uganda. Traditionally comprising 52 tribes the Ganda have a rich history and culture...

 mythology) and Uncama (Zulu mythology).

While Bantu cultures also believe in other spirits than those of the dead (for example, spirits of nature such as "Mwenembago", "the lord of the forest", in Zaramo

Zaramo

The Zaramo are a Bantu people who are based in eastern Tanzania, particularly in the area around Dar es Salaam, the Pugu Hills, and Bagamoyo. In 2000 the Zaramo population was estimated to number 656,730.-References:*...

 mythology), these play a much lesser role. In many cases, they were originally spirit of dead people.

Monsters

Bantu mythologies often include monster

Monster

A monster is any fictional creature, usually found in legends or horror fiction, that is somewhat hideous and may produce physical harm or mental fear by either its appearance or its actions...

s, referred to as amazimu in isiZulu

Zulu language

Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...

 and madimo, madimu, zimwi in other languages. In english

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translations of Bantu legends these words are often translated into "ogre

Ogre

An ogre is a large, cruel, monstrous, and hideous humanoid monster, featured in mythology, folklore, and fiction. Ogres are often depicted in fairy tales and folklore as feeding on human beings, and have appeared in many classic works of literature...

", as one of the most distinctive traits of such monsters is that of being man-eater

Man-eater

Man-eater is a colloquial term for an animal that preys upon humans. This does not include scavenging. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet...

s. They can sometimes take on the appearance

ShapeShifter

ShapeShifter is an Application Enhancer plugin for Mac OS X developed by Unsanity that allows the user to make system-wide modifications to the appearance of the operating system's graphical interface by applying GUI skins through “injection” into running code and without modifying system files,...

 of men or animals (for example, the Chaga

Chaga

The Chaga are Bantu-speaking indigenous Africans and the third largest ethnic group in Tanzania. They live on the southern and eastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, as well as in the Moshi area...

 living by the Kilimanjaro have tales of a monster with leopard

Leopard

The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...

 looks) and sometimes can cast spells on men and transform them into animals. A specific type of monsters is that of raised, mutilated dead (bearing a surface resemblance to western culture's zombie

Zombie

Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...

s) such as the umkovu of Zulu tradition and the ndondocha of the Yao people

Yao people

The Yao nationality is a government classification for various minorities in China. They form one of the 55 ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, where they reside in the mountainous terrain of the southwest and south...

.

Fables

The traditional culture of most Bantu peoples includes several fable

Fable

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...

s about personified, talking animals. These fables are often very close in both structure and purpose to those of the western tradition, to the point that scholars have sometimes hypotesized that Aesop

Aesop

Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...

 himself (who was purportedly a slave

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 from Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

) may have been inspired by African fables.

The prominent character of Bantu fables is the hare

Hare

Hares and jackrabbits are leporids belonging to the genus Lepus. Hares less than one year old are called leverets. Four species commonly known as types of hare are classified outside of Lepus: the hispid hare , and three species known as red rock hares .Hares are very fast-moving...

, a symbol of skill and cunning. Its main antagonist

Antagonist

An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

 is the sneaky and deceptive hyena

Hyena

Hyenas or Hyaenas are the animals of the family Hyaenidae of suborder feliforms of the Carnivora. It is the fourth smallest biological family in the Carnivora , and one of the smallest in the mammalia...

. Lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

 and elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

 usually represent brute force. Even more clever than the hare is the turtle

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...

, who beats its enemies with its patience and strong will. This symbology is, of course, subject to local variations. In areas where the hare is unknown (for example, along the Congo River

Congo River

The Congo River is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of . It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon...

), its role is often taken by the antelope

Antelope

Antelope is a term referring to many even-toed ungulate species indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelopes comprise a miscellaneous group within the family Bovidae, encompassing those old-world species that are neither cattle, sheep, buffalo, bison, nor goats...

. In Sotho

Sotho

Sotho may refer to:*The Sotho people , an African ethnic group principally resident in South Africa and Lesotho.*The Sotho language , a Bantu Language spoken in southern Africa, an official language of both South Africa and Lesotho.*The Northern Sotho language , a group of related Bantu dialects...

 culture the hare is replaced by a jackal

Jackal

Although the word jackal has been historically used to refer to many small- to medium-sized species of the wolf genus of mammals, Canis, today it most properly and commonly refers to three species: the black-backed jackal and the side-striped jackal of sub-Saharan Africa, and the golden jackal of...

, maybe due to the influence of Khoisan

Khoisan

Khoisan is a unifying name for two ethnic groups of Southern Africa, who share physical and putative linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the foraging San and the pastoral Khoi...

 culture, where the jackal is also a symbol of astuteness while the hare is seen as stupid. Zulus have stories about hares, but in some cases the ferret

Ferret

The ferret is a domesticated mammal of the type Mustela putorius furo. Ferrets are sexually dimorphic predators with males being substantially larger than females. They typically have brown, black, white, or mixed fur...

 takes on the role of the smart protagonist

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

.