Mboze, called 'the fertile', is the Great Mother of the Woyo serpent pantheon at the mouth of the Congo. With her husband Kuitikuiti she bore the children Makanga and Mbatilanda, and she later conceived again by her own son Makanga. When Kuitikuiti discovered the pregnancy he beat her to death with a club, but as she died she gave birth to the serpent daughter Bunzi, who took over her mother's rain-making office. De Heusch reads Mboze's transgressive maternity as the mythic origin of the fertility and sacral kingship complex of the coastal Kongo kingdoms; encyclopaedic surveys of African myth summarize her as the Great Mother of the Woyo. Her mythic death notwithstanding, she remains a divine being of the primordial generation rather than a mortal ancestor.