#azande

[bpgthoughts]

Exploring the Azande Tribe's Same-Sex Cultural Traditions

Discover the fascinating same-sex rituals of Africa's Azande tribe, where intimate bonds between men defined social structures and rites of

[southsud]

Group of Zande (Makaraka) men, 1879 pitt river museum 

[victoriansword]

Short Sword or Dagger of the Azande or Boa People of Zaire, Late 19th Century-Early 20th Century

A short sword / dagger of the African Azande or Boa Tribe of Zaire with a 415 mm long double edged blade, the hilt grip wrapped with fine copper wire. The iron blade is incised with a number of parallel straight and curved lines on each side and there is a central circular hole, circa late 19th / early 20th century. 50 cm long overall.

[kemetic-dreams]

The word Azande means the people who possess much land, and refers to their history as conquering warriors. Variant spellings include Adio (Makaraka), Zande, Zandeh, A-Zandeh and Sandeh. The name Niam-Niam (or Nyam-Nyam) was frequently used by foreigners to refer to the Azande in the 18th and early 19th century. This name is probably of Dinka origin, and means great eaters in that language (as well as being an onomatopoeia), supposedly referring to cannibalistic propensities. This name for the Azande was in use by other tribes in South Sudan, and later adopted by westerners. Today the name Niam-Niam is considered pejorative

[chickensinliterature]

Magic and Divination from CHICKEN by Annie Potts 

This post welcomes you to our new page “Chicken Recommended” wherein us chickens get to bring you some things we particularly like and care about.  Click here.

“Chickens play a role in divination for many cultures. The Azande tribe of Sudan feeds chickens benge, a substance poisonous to them, and determines the answer to a problem depending on whether or not the birds survive. Africans taken to America as slaves brought with them beliefs about divination and magic; one traditions deemed that ‘the avid scratchings of a wildly feathered, “frizzled” chicken in the earth [revealed] that some dangerous unknown maleficence lay beneath the surface’.The Pwa Ka Nyaw Po of Myanmar and Kariang or Yang tribes of Thailand use bamboo splinters insertied in the holes of chicken bones during rheir fortune-telling ceremonies, and decisions are based on the angles thet the splinters arrange into when placed inside the perforations.

The role of chickens as soothsayers goes back to ancient times. In Greek legend Alectryon was sent to guard against intrusion while Ares and Aphrodite conducted and illicit affair. Because he fell asleep at his post, leaving the two lovers to be discovered by Helios the sun, Alectryon was turned into a rooster so that he would forever remember to announce the coming dawn. Fortune-telling involving chickens is therefore called alectromancy, from the Greek for alectruon for ‘cock’ and manteia meaning ‘divination’. Alectromancers interpret chicken entrails during ritual named haruspicy; they examine stones found in the stomachs of roosters (a practice called alectorii); and they observe chickens’ appetites through a process called oraculum ex tripudio. For the latter method a circle is created using the letters of the alphabet, each sprinkled with an equal quantity of grain. A rooster or a hen is placed in the circle and observed to see how quickly he or she eatsand which letters are favoured. The letters chosen spell out a prophesy—a gallinaceous precursor of the Ouija board. 

The Etruscan civilization of ancient Italy and Corsica used another version of alectromancy: a high priest interpreted the order in which hens pecked at corn. The Etruscans also originated the wishbone custom—the practice of pulling apart the chicken’s dried clavicle bone to determine who gets the longer fragment and is thereby granted a wish. Both traditions were adopted by the Romans when they colonized Etruscan society at the end of the sixth century BC.” 

Painting of Woman Feeding the Hens from Tacuinum sanitatis, a medieval health and wellness book (ca. 1370-1400).

[southsud]

Photo from the book, A Shared Struggle: The People and Cultures of. South Sudan

[southsud]

(Top photo) Sultan N'dorma (Zande chief)

(Bottom photo) Spearmen Brought in By N'dorma

Photos from: Our Sudan: Its Pyramids and Progress, John Ward (1905)

[southsud]

@SZKhaled via Twitter

Father Yoere, an Azande elder

Yambio, South Sudan