The Akan of Ghana Their Ancient Beliefs

Abstract

After completing The Sacred State, of the Akan and The Akan Traditions of Origin, I realized that these studies had only scratched the surface of an extremely interesting and important civilization. It was therefore a great pleasure when I was asked by Mr. D. M. Balme of the University College of the Gold Coast to continue my work; and when the Academic Council of the University Council offered me an award for further research during . a period of six months. This is to record here my appreciation, and deep gratitude both to Mr. Balme, and to the Academic Council, who also gave me an allowance for a year to write up my material. Unfortunately a year was not enough: I spent almost six on the two volumes-The Akan of Ghana: Their Ancient Beliefs here presented, and The Akan Divine Kingship and its Proto-type in Ancient Egypt, now also ready for publication-though perhaps two years of these were taken up by illness, travel and other work. Egyptologists say that nothing in the ancient Egyptian civilization ever became quite obsolete. The same is true of the Akan culture and civilization in Ghana. Hence the many contradictions, the variations ,in the beliefs and customs, which are only intelligible if one realizes that these. are the result of an uneven development: new ideas did not always supplant old ones, but often continued side by side with them. A marked development had taken place in the course of centuries, owing to the introduction of new ideas from other matrilineally organized countries. Evidence for this are the events in the reigns of two Bono kings: Obunomankoma (1565-1451) and Takyi Akwamo (1451-65). Obunomankoma introduced the cult of the King as the Son of the Sun-god (see Ch. V, 5), which not only revolutionized all the ideas connected it kingship and the state but also those connected with the After Life