Resurrecting Hunter-Hero
Khoekhoe · demigod · ancestral / culture hero age · Recorded classification
Classed as demigod / culture-hero. Son of the high god Tsui-ǁGoab (parentIds). vitalStatus='other' because his defining trait is recurrent death-and-resurrection (neither simply 'dead' nor 'immortal'). The Damara name is Haiseb. Cited scholars: Theophilus Hahn (1881), W.H.I. Bleek (1864), Leonhard Schultze (1907), Sigrid Schmidt (2014).
Parentage
- parent: Wounded-Knee Sky-Father
Domains
- the hunt
- magic and trickery
- death and rebirth
Powers
- dies repeatedly and is born again, leaving many graves
- tricks and casts the man-eater Ga-gorib into his own pit
- is conceived through a cow that eats magical grass
Sources
- Heitsi-eibib is the great culture-hero and ancestor of the Khoekhoe: a hunter, seer, sorcerer and trickster, son of Tsui-ǁGoab, famed for repeatedly dying and being reborn (leaving many cairn-graves) and for killing the monster Ga-gorib.: Hahn, T., 'Tsuni-ǁGoam: The Supreme Being of the Khoi-khoi' (1881) (secondary); Bleek, W.H.I., 'Reynard the Fox in South Africa; or, Hottentot Fables and Tales' (1864) (secondary); Schmidt, S., 'Some Notes on the so-called Heitsi-Eibeb Graves in Namibia' (2014) (secondary)