Nzambi
Pende · deity · Pende traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Among the Pende (Bapende) of the Kwilu and Kasai regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, God is invoked under three names — Nzambi, Kalunga, and Mawese — each foregrounding a different facet of a single supreme being. Nzambi, a name shared widely across Central African Bantu peoples, designates God as the creator and the 'great chief', but a distant one: he made all things and everything belongs to him, yet he does not intervene directly in daily affairs. That role falls to the ancestral dead, who are the immediate masters of life. De Sousberghe, the principal ethnographer of the Pende, reports that Nzambi is probably the most recent of the three names to enter Pende usage.
Domains
- creation of the world
- supreme sovereignty
Powers
- to create the world and all that is in it
Epithets
- fumu wa mukatshi (the faraway chief)'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary)
Relations
- co identified aspect: KalungaNzambi and Kalunga are two of the three names under which the Pende speak of the one God; Kalunga names him in his association with death and the abode of the dead.'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary)
- co identified aspect: MaweseNzambi and Mawese are two names of the one God; Mawese names him as the giver of customs and of the mahamba to the ancestors.Léon de Sousberghe, L'art pende (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux-Arts, 1959). (secondary)
Sources
- Nzambi is the most recently adopted of the three Pende names for the one supreme God, the remote creator and 'great chief' who made the world but leaves the ancestors as humankind's immediate masters.: 'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary); Léon de Sousberghe, L'art pende (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux-Arts, 1959). (secondary)