Owner of the Dazzling Light, the Divider

High god of the Kikuyu; classed as deity, genderless (sex='none'). Jomo Kenyatta's 'Facing Mount Kenya' (1938) is the canonical insider ethnography. Mwene-Nyaga associated with Kĩrĩnyaga (Mt Kenya). Mũrungu is a wider Bantu/Meru name also used.

Children

• First Man and Founding Father
• First Woman and Mother-Moulder

Domains

• creation
• sky and rain
• the mountain abode

Powers

• divides and apportions the goods of creation among peoples
• comes down to rest on the snow-bright peak of Mount Kenya
• grants the founding ancestors their homeland beneath the fig tree

Epithets

• Mwene-Nyaga
• Mũgai

Relations

• ancestor of: First Man and Founding Father

Sources

• Kenyatta, J., 'Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu' (London, 1938)
• Leakey, L.S.B., 'The Southern Kikuyu before 1903' (1977)