Obassi Nsi
Ekoi · deity · Ekoi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Obassi Nsi is the earth god of the Ekoi (Ejagham), the chthonic counterpart to the sky god Obassi Osaw. Having helped create all things, Nsi descends to live upon the earth and grows ever greater in power, since every newborn child falls to the earth and every dead person returns to it. As the nurturing ground Nsi provides food, water and medicine, and is credited with teaching humans the arts of hunting and farming. The Obassi Osaw / Obassi Nsi sky-earth dyad is the structural centre of Ekoi cosmology.
Domains
- earth and land
- nurture farming and the dead
Powers
- to teach humans to hunt and to grow food
- to receive the dead back into the earth
Epithets
- Obasi NsiMolefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds., Encyclopedia of African Religion (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2009). (secondary)
Relations
- ally: Obassi OsawCounterpart of the sky god in the central Ekoi sky-earth pairing: Nsi the nurturing earth below to Osaw's sky above, the two having made all things between them.P. Amaury Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush (London: William Heinemann, 1912). (secondary)
Sources
- Obassi Nsi is the Ekoi/Ejagham earth god, co-creator with the sky god Obassi Osaw, the nurturer who taught humankind to hunt and farm and to whom the dead return.: P. Amaury Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush (London: William Heinemann, 1912). (secondary); Harold Scheub, A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). (secondary); Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds., Encyclopedia of African Religion (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2009). (secondary)