Nzambi a Mpungu

Supreme creator God of the Bakongo, remote maker of the two worlds and the nature-spirits.

Children

• Mahungu

Domains

• creation
• supreme deity

Powers

• Create the worlds of the living and the dead
• Bring forth the simbi nature-spirits

Epithets

• Nzambi a Mpungu kongo · Nzambi a Mpungu'Nzambi the Almighty / Supreme' (mpungu 'the highest, paramount') — the Kongo supreme creator-god, the most-high above the lesser bakisiMacGaffey, Wyatt. Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986 (secondary scholarship); Bentley, W. Holman. Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language, Baptist Missionary Society, 1887 (primary ethnography)

Relations

• spouse: NzambiciNzambici, the earth-mother and female counterpart, is paired with the remote sky-creator in Lower Congo cosmology.Dennett, Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort (1898) (secondary)
• equated with: the Withdrawing CreatorReciprocal of lozi_nyambe.equated-with — Same western-Bantu high-god theonym (root *Nyambe/Nzambi) in Lozi Nyambe and Kongo Nzambi a Mpungu — an areal cognate name so identified by scholars, NOT a shared cult: the myths and theologies are independent.Edwin W. Smith (ed.), African Ideas of God: A Symposium (1950), on the Nyambe/Nzambi name-cluster (secondary); Alice Werner, Myths and Legends of the Bantu (1933), ch. on the High God (secondary)

Sources

• existence: MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa (1986) (secondary)