Manseren Nanggi

Biak Numfor · deity · Biak Numfor traditional religion; continuing · deity

Manseren Nanggi, 'the Lord of the Sky,' is the high deity of traditional Biak-Numfor religion, associated with the heavens, the sun and the overarching order of the cosmos. Standing above the ancestral spirits honoured in korwar images and the nature-spirits of land and sea, Nanggi was the being to whom the term for lordship, manseren, most fully applied, and whose name Protestant translators later took over for the Christian God. Sources differ on how sharply the sky-lord was personified as against the sky itself.

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