185 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Obibini

The following is a selection from Pre Colonial Black Afrika by Cheikh Anta Diop detailing the migratory history of the Bamum and Effang people of Cameroon.

D.P. de Pédrals in an article published in December 1951, relates that Fr. Trilles, after a series of studies came to the conclusion that the Fang had some contact with Ethiopian Christianity during their early migration: in the last century, they had not yet gotten as far as the Atlantic Coast. So, their migration must have been relatively recent.

Similar studies by M.D.W. Jeffreys point to a connection between the Bamum and the Egyptians, Pédrals writes:

Having noted in several books on Egypt the vulture-pharaoh and the serpent-pharaoh relationships, and especially the fact pointed out by Diodorus: that the Ethiopian and Egyptian priests kept an asp curled up in their hats; having also noted various examples of zoomorphic two headed representations, particularly in The Book of the Dead (Ani papyrus), folio 7, M.D.W. Jeffreys declared himself convinced that ” the Bamum cult of the king derives from a similar Egyptian cult.

These facts also bear some resemblance to the existence of the royal vulture of Cayo, called Geb, which was also the Egyptian name for Earth, the reclining god.

Work Cited:

Diop, Cheikh Anta. Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States. L. Hill, 1987. pg. 228

Pédrals D.P., Encylopédie Mensuelle d’outre-mer, December 1951, pg. 347-349