Lonkundo

Lonkundo is the eponymous founding ancestor of the Nkundo branch of the Mongo and the opening figure of the national epic. Instructed in the making of snares by the ghost of his father, he dreams that he will trap the sun; when he goes to his traps he finds caught in them not the sun but Ilankaka, a woman who shines like it, and he takes her to wife. Through her he becomes father of Itonde, the bell-bearing hero, and so grandfather of Lianja. The cycle stresses Lonkundo's mastery of the hunt and his repeated death and restoration, marking him as the culture-bringer who establishes trapping among his people.

Children

• Itonde

Domains

• hunting and trapping
• ancestral foundation

Powers

• to set traps that can catch even the sun
• to return to life after dying

Epithets

• LonkundoHulstaert, G. (1961). Les Mongo: aperçu général. Tervuren: Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale (Annales, Sciences humaines, n.s. 5). (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: IlankakaLonkundo takes the sun-woman Ilankaka, caught in his snare, as his wife; she bears him Itonde.Scheub, H. (2000). A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (secondary)

Sources

• Lonkundo is the founding ancestor-hero of the Nkundo, taught trapping by his father's ghost, who snares the sun-woman Ilankaka and begins the lineage of the Lianja epic.: Scheub, H. (2000). A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (secondary); de Rop, A. (1964). Lianja, l'épopée des Mongo. Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Sciences morales et politiques, n.s. XXX-1. (secondary)