Owamekaso
Owamekaso is the national tutelary goddess of the Kalabari and the chief of the community heroes (oru). Kalabari tradition holds that she gave the metropolis its older name, Owame (Elem Kalabari), and remembers her as the mother of the clan's deities, presiding over the local gods of the several settlements. She is distinguished by her opposition to war and bloodshed: alone among the eastern Delta trading states, Kalabari had a tutelary deity who forbade homicide within the community, a rule central to the clan's self-understanding. Her principal shrine is associated with Buguma, where a brass cult-figure of the goddess is said to be kept hidden. In later syncretic tradition, shaped by the era of Atlantic trade, she was reckoned a sister of the sea-ruling figure Brittania.
Parentage
- parent: TamunoAs an oru she is among the free spirits created by the high god Tamuno.Robin Horton, 'The Kalabari World-View,' Africa 32:3 (1962), pp. 197-220. (secondary)
Domains
- sovereignty and tutelage
- peace and law
- motherhood
Powers
- forbids the shedding of kin-blood in the city
- shelters Elem Kalabari and its people
Epithets
- Owame Akaso — Akaso of the metropolis OwameE. J. Alagoa, A History of the Niger Delta (Ibadan University Press, 1972). (secondary)
Relations
- parent: TamunoAs an oru she is among the free spirits created by the high god Tamuno.Robin Horton, 'The Kalabari World-View,' Africa 32:3 (1962), pp. 197-220. (secondary)
Sources
- Owamekaso is the female national tutelary deity of the Kalabari, head of the community deities, whose prohibition on homicide distinguished Kalabari from the other Delta city-states.: E. J. Alagoa, A History of the Niger Delta (Ibadan University Press, 1972). (secondary); E. J. Alagoa, 'Oral Tradition among the Ijo,' Journal of African History 7:3 (1966), pp. 405-419. (secondary)
- She is remembered as mother of the deities of the Kalabari clan, with a shrine at Buguma.: Robin Horton, Kalabari Sculpture (Lagos: Dept. of Antiquities, 1965). (secondary)