Sky-God supreme being of the Akan pantheon; deistic-remote creator structurally parallel to but theologically distinct from the Yoruba Olodumare and the Igbo Chukwu. The pestle-and-sky withdrawal narrative (Rattray 1923) is the foundational theogonic episode: Nyame originally lived close to humanity, but an old woman pounding fufu repeatedly struck the sky with her pestle, prompting Nyame to withdraw to the upper sky and establish the deistic-remote distance characteristic of West African Sky-God theology. The Gye Nyame adinkra symbol ("Except for God [no one knows the beginning or end of creation]") is the most-iconic visual mark of Nyame-theology and one of the most-recognizable adinkra signs across the Akan-diaspora world. Nyame-cult was traditionally non-iconic and lacked dedicated temples or priestly-class — the deistic-remote theology meant Nyame was approached through ancestor-mediation and abosom-mediation rather than institutional cult. The name Nyame has been adopted into Christian-Akan and Muslim-Akan religious-syncretic vocabulary as the standard Twi term for "God."