ethnohistory and the akan of ghana

International African Institute

Ethnohistory and the Akan of GhanaAuthor(s): Jack GoodySource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1959), pp.67-81Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157500 .

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[671

ETHNOHISTORY AND THE AKAN OF GHANA

JACK GOODY

M RS. EVA MEYEROWITZ's book, entitled The Akan of Ghana,' is the third of a four-volume work on the Ashanti and their neighbours. The first to appear

was The Sacred State of the Akan ( 95 ), the second Akan Traditions of Origin (I 952), and the fourth, not yet published, is to be entitled The Akan Divine Kingship and its Prototype in Ancient Egypt. They are the fruit of Mrs. Meyerowitz's researches in Ghana which began in I943 when, as Art Supervisor at Achimota College, she was commissioned by the Burlington Magazine to write a series of articles on Ashanti gold ornaments. Since then she has engaged in field research among the Akan-speaking peoples, which has been supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute, by the Colonial Research Council, and, in her latest studies, by the University College of Ghana.

The scope of the latest volume is better indicated by the sub-title Their Ancient Beliefs than by the title itself, The Akan of Ghana. Even here, the possessive adjective indicates a somewhat greater coverage than is actually undertaken. For although the book is not without occasional reference to the religious activities of other Akan- speaking peoples, it deals essentially with certain of the cults found in the area to the north of the Ashanti region which Mrs. Meyerowitz has already made the main focus of her interest. This has undoubtedly been an important area in the history of the Akan-speaking peoples. But it has to be borne in mind at the outset that religious cults, particularly those of the abosom variety which are given the greatest attention in this study, vary considerably within quite small areas. As far as specific features of these cults are concerned, it would be difficult to consider any one as typical of the practices of the Akan-speaking peoples as a whole.

The Akan of Ghana begins with a summary of a reconstruction of Akan migrations contained in the previous volume, under the heading, ' The Ancestry of the Akan '. This leads to an analysis of the ' ancient beliefs' in terms of four 'cult types': the Moon Cult, the Venus Cult, the Sun Cult, and the Ntoro Cult. The Ntoro cult is the ritual expression of patriliny among the Ashanti. It should be noted for the benefit of readers of earlier volumes, as no reference to the transposition is made in the text, that the Ntoro phase is now visualized as succeeding the Sun Cult, whereas it had previously been associated with an earlier cultural phase (I95I, p. 208). We then pass to an account of the reigns of the kings and queen mothers of the Bono Kingdom from 1295 to I740, derived from oral traditions, by means of which the author tries to substantiate a developmental sequence and even a specific time depth for the cult types. The volume concludes with a chapter entitled 'Analogies to Akan Beliefs and Customs in Libyan North Africa' which serves as an anticipation of the final volume, as well as a support for the contention developed earlier that the Akan, or at any rate the founders of the Akan states, were Libyan Berbers from a remote oasis in the Tibesti region of the Sahara. In this chapter similarities are traced between the religion of the Akan-speaking peoples and the recorded cults of the Mediterranean area.

I The Akan of Ghana: their Ancient Beliefs, by Eva L. R. Meyerowitz. London: Faber, i958. Pp. 164, ill. 45s.




In view of the continuity of Mrs. Meyerowitz's work, it is not possible to consider the latest study in isolation from the earlier ones; for the thesis of one volume depends in large measure on those of the preceding ones. After discussing her analysis of the 'ancient religion', I shall therefore consider her theories of migration. This will

require, firstly, a detailed examination of some of the information provided, and

secondly, a discussion of certain general problems connected with this type of ethnohistorical reconstruction.

The Religion of the Akan-speaking Peoples Mrs. Meyerowitz's object is not primarily to give us an account of contemporary

religious institutions as such but rather to characterize various cult types which she believes to have existed in the past. There are two possible approaches to such an

enterprise. On the one hand there is the method of historical documentation, on the other there is the search for survivals. In most reconstructions of the African past, however, it is not always easy to see when an author is using one method and when the other. For in the absence of indigenous written records and of adequate archaeo-

logical field-work, the material for such a reconstruction consists of the accounts of travellers and the oral traditions of the peoples themselves. From the historical point of view, these traditions, which form the main body of available material, can clearly themselves be but incomplete ' survivals ' of past events, by no means insulated from the possibility of imaginative reinterpretation. As much recent anthropological research has shown, the memory may be conditioned more by present circumstance than by the need of historians for accurate records. It must be said that Mrs. Meyero- witz does not always make clear the distinction between past events and their sub-

sequent relation. For example, the list of contents announces a section entitled ' The Foundation of Tanosu by the Divine Ameyaa Ampromfi: a Historical Account from the Eighteenth Century '. When we turn to page 32, however, we find that this

proves to be an account by one of the Divinity's present-day descendants of events which the author assumes to have occurred about I75o. This illustrates a constant readiness to accept what an informant says as satisfactory evidence of past happenings.

It is clear that an oral tradition which, on the author's reckoning, stretches back to

pre-Chaucerian times can be only of limited value in providing glimpses of earlier forms of religious life. Inevitably, reconstructions made on such a foundation will

largely depend upon the backcloth against which the author views her material, for it is this which consciously or unconsciously will guide the selection of the aspects of

religious activity that are considered to be survivals and the cult type to which a

particular element should be allocated. Let me give one example of this selection. Mrs. Meyerowitz suggests that the earliest cult type of the Akan consisted of a Moon Cult. The opening sentence of the first chapter runs:

It is evident from the position of the queenmother in the state, and the rites and customs which reflect the identification of the divine life-giving queenmother with the moon, that in the beginning a Mother-goddess, visible as the moon, was held to have given birth to the universe [p. 23].

Etymological evidence is adduced to support this claim and it is contended that

Nyame (the Supreme Being, Heaven) was originally the Mother-goddess. A woman

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possessed by the vital force (kra, often' soul') of the Moon Mother-goddess could herself give birth to a goddess (obosom), who, manifesting herself in the form of an animal, became the totem (ahyene boa) of the matrilineal clan descended from the founding ancestress. The senior woman of the clan was therefore responsible for conducting sacrifices to the goddess. Besides the spiritual duties she also acquired temporal powers and one such priestess became ruler of the state. 'From earliest times the queenmother ruled her state, assisted by a council of head-women from other clans and sub-clans.'

In an appreciative review of her first volume in this journal, Dr. Danquah has already suggested that there is no evidence that in fact 'the female in Nyame was prior to the male in her'. Nor, he maintains, is there any evidence that the queenmother 'ruled alone as queen' (Danquah, I952, p. 364). But Mrs. Meyerowitz makes no reference to this criticism nor, as the dogmatic tone of the opening sentence indicates, any attempt to meet it.

The Cult of the Clan Goddess, conducted in this hypothetical and ethnographically unparalleled instance of a political system staffed by females alone, in a veritable golden age of feminists, is divided into three facets: The Totem Animal, The Sacred Tree of the Deity, and the New Year Festival. The evidence for totemic cults is somewhat sporadic; one of the main examples given is from Daboya in Gonja. But my own field-work in that area suggests that this has been seriously misunderstood. There are, however, many ' rituals ', though not perhaps ' cults ', associated with 'totems ' in West Africa. It is the grounds for allocating them to a distinct archaic phase of culture which seem slight. Most social anthropologists would regard totemic observances of this sort as critical indexes of the corporate identity of social groups belonging to rather the same order of phenomena as the flags of different nation states. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find the doyen of British social anthropology, Professor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who would certainly have supported this latter interpretation of African ' totemism ', being credited in the introduction as the person 'who first made me realize the importance of the material I had collected about clan-totemism-a system essentially connected with the matriarchal stage of culture' (p. 5). It would be difficult for anyone with any detailed knowledge of Radcliffe-Brown's writings on totemism, or of social anthropology in the post- Frazerian era, to make such a statement.

The section on the Sacred Tree of the Deity, presumably a case of tree-worship in the Tylorian scheme, is supported by reference to various rites. Similar customs exist today among the neighbouring Akan-speaking peoples of Gonja, but there is no indication of a greater antiquity for this than for most other forms of religious activity.

The last section deals with the New Year Festival and here evidence is produced from the coastal town of Winneba for the annual rejuvenation of the vital force of the divinity by the Moon Mother-goddess; the section is entitled 'The Death and Resurrection of the Antelope-god at Winneba '. Those who have enjoyed the unfold- ing of the mystery of the Golden Bough as told in Sir James Frazer's detective story will be quite ready to accept this sort of account as evidence enough of a widely held belief. But, in fact, the interpretation of this ritual hunt, which is associated with a particular obosom, as the revitalizing of the antelope-god, the totem of the clan, by an

69




annual death and resurrection is extremely tenuous. Nor is there any justification for the assumption that all abosom have been associated with major descent groups. Once

again there are no adequate grounds for claiming that cults of the Winneba variety are older than others. This criticism is confirmed by the choice of one of the illustra- tions to this particular section, which, although it has no specific mention in the text at this stage, is clearly intended to support the general argument. It is a drawing of an ' antelope mask of the obosom Sakrabundu ', taken from R. A. Freeman's account of his travels in the area at the end of the last century (Freeman, I898). Freeman

clearly states that this cult (which he calls Sakrobundi) is not of long standing in the area but has been introduced 'in comparatively recent times' from the Grusi- or

Mossi-speaking peoples of the north (1898, p. 148). As evidence, it therefore tends to indicate precisely the opposite of Mrs. Meyerowitz's main contention, but without recourse to an obscure primary source, the reader would be in no position to appre- ciate this.

It is difficult to understand this work of religious archaeology without some know-

ledge of its general intellectual background. As far as the overall approach to non-

European religions is concerned, the main influence appears to be Sir James Frazer, mediated by Robert Graves and other secondary sources. This is apparent in the

many references to the death and resurrection of gods and divine kings. Indeed, in two cases Mrs. Meyerowitz gives a second version of ceremonies already described in an earlier volume (The Sacred State), but with the addition of new information con-

cerning ' the former personification of the dying and resurrected god' (p. 59, n. 2). About the first of these ceremonies, the Apo Festival at Wenchi (here Wankyi), she remarks in a footnote that:

These rites are secret, and I acquired the information about Ntoa and his brides piecemeal and with difficulty, by asking questions not too obviously related to the festival. Thus, when I wrote The Sacred State, my ideas on the subject were not fully clarified, and I did not venture to speak in terms of a dying and resurrected god [59, n. 2].

The reader will respect the author's earlier restraint but will possibly feel that this method of building up an account of a ceremony leaves something to be desired if it makes alternative interpretation so simple a matter. This is especially the case when the ceremony is taken to be an example of Cult Type II, i.e. of an early stratum of belief. The second ceremony is placed in the later Cult Type III, and centres upon the death and resurrection not of a Venus figure but of the Divine King. In another footnote the author explains that:

The ritual is described in the Sacred State, pp. I69, I70, but without the references to the king's death and resurrection. The death of the king is a subject too painful to be mentioned, therefore the information was suppressed [90, n. i].

In this case, however, the new information is derived not from a reinterpretation of old material but from ' additional material' supplied by Nana Akumfi Ameyaw III.

For the interpretation of beliefs the main source has been the work of Dr. J. B.

Danquah, a distinguished lawyer-statesman of Ghana, who has also written a number of books on the Akan-speaking peoples further south. Mrs. Meyerowitz has drawn heavily on Danquah's The Atkan Doctrine of God (London, 1944). The main part of Dr. Danquah's study is devoted to an exposition of the ethical and the theological

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aspects of Akan religion as he sees them, which is on a very abstract level. His summary begins: ' Our final account of the Akan system may be summed up thus: Ultimate Reality or the Thing is centred around a theocentric system the axis of which is spirit, the medial line between corresponding parts of ultimate being' (p. 170). And this is supported by many interpretations of a ' symbolic' nature. I do not think that Dr. Danquah would claim for one moment that these notions were held explicitly by a large proportion of the Akan-speakers, any more than that the medieval peasant understood the theology of Aquinas. On the other hand he rejects a distinction made by Westermann between ' the ideas of West Africa's thoughtful people about God and the ideas of West Africa's crowd about God, for the simple reason that it is illogical to separate a people's philosophers from the philosophy of that people' (p. 9). He would apparently regard the ideas put forward in his book as 'derived from the common ideas current among . . . the crowd', as is all 'the

philosophizing of the philosophers '. We must, therefore, regard Dr. Danquah's book as a philosophical gloss on Akan

beliefs, impelled by an understandable desire to show them as capable of such elabo- ration as have been the authors of Christian dogmas; he gives little or no information about cult activities, hardly mentions ancestor worship and never witchcraft. Mrs. Meyerowitz's book also gives scant attention to these two latter aspects of the religious life of the Akan, but on the other hand field-work has made her aware of the existence of features other than those discussed by Dr. Danquah. Akan custom and belief is seen as consisting of many' variations ' and' contradictions ' which are only intelligible on the basis of a hypothesis of uneven survival from earlier conditions (1958, p. 3). Such a theory permits a relatively clear separation to be made between the beliefs which Danquah took as his starting-point and actual beliefs of living people which can then be regarded either as the dross of earlier ages or the results of a later decline (Danquah, 1952, p. 360). At the same time, such a procedure enables Mrs. Meyerowitz to postulate various cult layers in accordance with her general view of the growth of religious institutions. In this she is assisted by the methods of inter- preting symbols to which Dr. Danquah, as a philosopher, inclines.

Alternative interpretations of Akan religion are, however, possible. One has only to turn to the work of R. S. Rattray, who lived among the Ashanti for nearly a quarter of a century, as well as to the concise summary by Professor K. A. Busia in African Worlds (I954). Professor Busia's home is the very area in which the bulk of Mrs. Meyero- witz's researches were carried out, but no reference is made to his work, despite the difference in the interpretations offered. From these other accounts it would appear that Ashanti religion displays many similarities with the magico-religious systems of other West African peoples. These authors make no attempt at religious archaeology, and it seems doubtful whether such an enterprise could ever be success- ful. But to stand the slightest chance of success, any such attempt would have to start from a well-rounded picture of Akan religion in relation to other African systems and proceed by methods considerably more circumspect than those adopted in this study.

The History of the Akan-speaking Peoples It is inevitable that a discussion of Mrs. Meyerowitz's views on the development of

Akan religion should require an assessment of her historical assumptions, because

7I




what she offers is an analysis of ancient beliefs and where these came from. The validity of her sequence of cult-types depends, in part at least, upon the reconstruction of Akan migrations offered in her earlier volume ( 952; also I957), to which frequent reference is made. The general hypothesis is that the rulers of the present-day Akan came from the oasis of Djado in the Eastern Sahara, west of Tibesti. As a result, the Akan are said to have a culture which is not ' as hitherto assumed Negro-African but on the whole Libyo-Berber in origin' (I958, p. 15). Before considering the

validity of this hypothesis, which has been put forward in various forms by other writers, I want to point to some of the methodological difficulties involved in such

investigations by discussing some specific topics. In the course of her reconstruction of the migrations of the Akan, Mrs. Meyerowitz speaks of two kingdoms hitherto unknown under those names to students of West African ethnology, and a third, Gonja, in which my wife and I have recently carried out intensive field-work. As the information she has supplied on these states has recently been mentioned by other writers such as Hinderling, Cornevin, Forde, and others, I feel it would be of some

guidance to scholars to consider the information supplied in the light of personal knowledge.

(i) The Kania Kingdom In the volume on Akan Traditions of Origin Mrs. Meyerowitz writes of a Kania

kingdom, which is said to have been founded in the present region of Gonja at the end of the fifteenth century, either by Mande peoples or by refugees from Bona in the

Ivory Coast, after the expulsion of the previous Dagomba and Mamprusi rulers. In none of the earlier histories of the area, nor in any of the manuscript accounts written

by local administrators, is there any mention of this kingdom. However, on the basis of information provided by a Greek road contractor, Mr. Tranakides, who had spent some while building roads in the area, she includes this account of an earlier Gonja kingdom, providing the name of its king, the position of its capital, and the proven- ance of its rulers. This kingdom of Kania is subsequently identified with the Acanes Grande of early European maps. My own study of these maps (Davity, i 660, 2nd ed.; Dapper, I686) suggests that there is room for a great deal of latitude in their inter-

pretation, and that this is by no means the most obvious one, even accepting the existence of a kingdom so named.

The capital of the kingdom is said to have been Kanyiamase, the present town of

Gbwiipe (Angl. Buipe) in the state of Gonja. The author tells us that she went to

Gonja especially to confirm this material but owing to the lack of roads was unable to reach the area. Dr. Hinderling subsequently paid a visit to this town (Hinderling, I952). Obtaining no information on the subject of the Kania kingdom, he concluded that it could scarcely have extended over the whole of the present area of Gonja, although, according to Mrs. Meyerowitz, this was in fact the very heart of the ancient state.

I would suggest that there is no satisfactory evidence for the existence of a Kania

kingdom, nor for any town of Kanyamase. During some six months' residence in

Gbwiipe (July-Dec. 1956) I heard no mention of the supposed kingdom. Indeed it was hardly possible to make intelligible inquiries in the Gbanyito language (Angl. Gonja) for the word given as the name of the capital, Kanyamase (pl. Nyemase) in fact

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means autochthon or, to Muslims, pagan. So that any earlier inhabitant of the country was automatically kanyamase, an autochthon. The source of confusion is obvious from the remark in an article by Tranakides in the Transactions of the Ghana Historical Society that 'the extinct tribe or religious sect of Nyamasi or Nyamease once living in Gonja has as yet to be explained ' (I95 3, . 38). Clearly the explanation is that Tranakides has misconceived the name for autochthon as a name for a pre- Gonja tribe and Mrs. Meyerowitz has assumed it was a kingdom. It is not surprising, therefore, that she found no confirmation of its existence during her researches in Gonja, but her failure to reach Gbwiipe was not the reason. It is a serious comment upon her method that she accepted such slender evidence and elaborated it in such a manner. Only a reader with detailed knowledge of the area could possibly realize what errors of judgement were involved. It becomes very difficult to know what material has been subjected to a similar imaginative interpretation.

(ii) The Kumbu Kingdom Another kingdom the name of which appears in no previous record known to

scholars of the Western Sudan is that of Kumbu, which Mrs. Meyerowitz identifies with Kong.

Ward (I948) had already recorded the claim of the rulers of the Akwamu state to have come from Kong in French territory, a town situated on the direct route between North Ashanti and the Niger towns of Segou and Djenne. We know little of Kong itself, as Tauxier's promised book has never appeared.I But Delafosse (I9I2) has a number of references. He showed that it was a Mande-Dyula centre in the midst of a Gur-speaking population, whose language belongs to the Senufo group, like that of the Nafana of the north-west of the Ashanti Region. Some of the Mande-speaking population claimed to have come direct from Djenne, while others maintained that they lived in the famous trading centre of Begho (Beeo) in the gold-bearing region of Banda (NW. Ashanti Region) until the inhabitants dispersed as the result of an internal quarrel (Delafosse, 1912, vol. i, p. 279 (i)).

Mrs. Meyerowitz records, and apparently accepts, a tradition of the Aberade clan, the royal clan of Akwamu, which tells how they were driven from their ' Kumbu or Kumu kingdom by Black Fulani or Zaberima (Songhay) ', an event which she claims ' may' be connected with the capture of Djenne by the Songhay in 1473. (' During the five years the siege lasted the Songhay horsemen had ample time to divert themselves by attacking the regions south of the town.') The Kumbu people are then said to have 'fled into the forest region south of Banda where the heads of the 27 con- federated states of Kumbu rallied round their king and formed a temporary govern- ment at Dwenemu . ..' ( 942, p. 96), from whence they spread to various parts of the forest zone.

I am not here concerned with the authenticity of the migration itself, except to remark that a great deal of credence is given to what is apparently a single oral account of events in the distant past. I want merely to point out that Mrs. Meyerowitz has not only changed the name of the kingdom for no apparent reason (it is certainly more like Akwamu), but has also shifted it some 50 miles northwards to the region of Bobo-

' Tauxier, I921, announced that a book entitled ittat de Kong was in course of publication.

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Dioulassou. There are no stated grounds for this, apart from the assumption that when earlier travellers spoke of the Kong mountains they really meant the cliffs of Banfora. This identification is Mrs. Meyerowitz's own; it has not been shared by those who knew the country in its early days. Indeed Delafosse (I912, vol. i, p. 63) and Freeman (1898, p. 183) both specifically deny the existence of any such mountains. But whether or not we accept Mrs. Meyerowitz's speculation concerning this, there would appear to be no satisfactory evidence that the town of Kong had an earlier site, nor that it was called Kumbu, nor that it was suddenly evacuated by all its inhabitants, nor that it was of the political importance of the order suggested by the author. Indeed all the statements concerning this earlier ' Akan ' kingdom appear to be based neither upon previous sources nor upon local field investigations, but are

reinterpretations of the oral traditions of a far-off people.

(iii) Gonja While pursuing her researches Mrs. Meyerowitz visited the state of Gonja to the

north of Ashanti where she gathered information with the aid of her Twi-speaking interpreter who apparently did not speak any of the local languages (i957, p. 87, note 3). Unfortunately this has introduced another source of error.

In her article on The Akan and Ghana (I 957) the author quotes a verbatim statement made by the Kasawule-wura at Damongo (Gonja) in 946 to the effect that 'Bono, Akan, Gonja and Guan, all came originally from Dia, Dja or Nia. Their original name was Agwa ....' I knew the man in question quite well (Mrs. Meyerowitz else- where supplies his name) and have recorded from him a drum history in Gba;yito. He appears to know nothing of Dia, Dja, or Nia, nor of any Agwa. With regard to the other names, there is no way known to me whereby one can distinguish in

Gbanyito either between Bono and Akan, or between Gonja and Guan. I can only assume that the use of two-stage interpretation has led to a great deal of misunder-

standing and consequently misinformation.

Proper transliteration becomes a matter of great importance when a whole theory of migration is based upon the identification of place-names. It would appear that what we are being asked to accept is not deductions based upon the literal statements of informants but hypotheses erected upon the identifications of an assistant who

apparently did not know the local language. A great deal hangs upon the conse-

quences of the remark about the Agwa. Gonja is said to have been founded by Agwa, who appear to have founded Mamprusi as well (I957, p. 86). The present volume begins by repeating the claim of an elder of the chief of Daboya that the Agwa (who a few lines later are identified with the Dja - Dia, the Gua = Guan, Gbon, &c., and the Braun = Brong, formerly of the Sahara and now of present-day Ghana) were ousted from the Niger region in the eleventh century by the Assaud, a Muslim Berber tribe. In the previous version (I957) this name is given as Assauano; the identification, which is Mrs. Meyerowitz's, has now become ' Daboya tradition'.

Taking into account the informants to whom these statements are attributed the

only possible local name from which ' Agwa' can have been derived is Hanga (alt. Anga). I recently lived by a Hanga village for four months and never elicited any re- sponse from them except that they were the' people of the land ', the autochthons. It was the same in the other villages I visited. Moreover they are only one of many

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apparently autochthonous peoples living within the boundaries of the Gonja state and the remark about their 'founding' Gonja is certainly a hazardous conjecture.

In the various references to Gonja, there are a number of other inaccuracies. For

example, in a footnote in the present volume (I958, p. Ioo), the author records her

'impression' that 'the original deity of the Bono, Gonja and the Guan was Buru-

kung '. Burukung is a name of a shrine known among a number of the peoples of this area, for there is a considerable degree of mobility of shrines, which undergo various

changes as they pass from place to place. But there is not the slightest evidence that this particular shrine has ever played anything but a peripheral part in Gonja religious life. I am equally dubious of the validity of the impression as far as the Bono and the Guan are concerned, for it appears to be generally accepted that the centre of the

worship of Burukung is among the Atyoti (or Adjati) of the Ghana-Togoland border

(Guiness, 1934). Again, the source of error is possibly a mistaken linguistic association (Ebori,

Gbanyito for High God being equated with Burukung). But this further emphasizes the dangers associated with such researches. Any field-worker in another culture is

constantly faced with the problem of perceiving a different world from his own with an already structured mind. His difficulties are increased when he employs an inter-

preter, further increased by the employment of two interpreters, and still heightened in certain directions by the use of educated but anthropologically untrained persons. These difficulties can be partially offset by undergoing a suitable training, which, in the present case, would certainly include linguistics and social anthropology. The undoubted aesthetic sensibility of Mrs. Meyerowitz and her interpreter, Mr. Antuban, appears to add a further difficulty to a task already fraught with dangers, in that it may on occasion lead to a rather too free association of words and ideas.

Ethnohistory and the Comparative Method I have dealt with certain points of detail in Mrs. Meyerowitz's reconstructions be-

cause it is at this level that the data are least likely to be subjected to critical analysis and most likely to slip into the works of subsequent writers as established fact. But it might well be claimed that inaccuracies at the microscopic level do not necessarily detract from the value of the major hypotheses concerning the origin and development of the Akan. I have already discussed the question of the sequence of four cult

types and the methods employed in the delineation of these. While it could hardly be denied of any centralized type political system such as the Akan ' State ' that it must have at one time ' evolved ' from a less centralized form of organization and that such a process involved changes in magico-religious institutions, Mrs. Meyerowitz's claim to have discovered more specific evidence of a sequence of cult types must certainly be rejected.

This sequence, however, forms part of a general theory concerning the origin and

migration of the Akan. Not only did they originate in a remote oasis in the Sahara, but because they there enjoyed a Near Eastern culture,' Akan culture and civilization is not Negro-African in origin but can be classed, on the whole, as Libyo-Berber, more precisely perhaps as Libyo-Phoenician or Carthaginian ... a civilization which owed almost everything to the Near East and Egypt' (I958, p. 5).

Comparisons of peoples living in different parts of the world with those of the

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ancient Middle East have long been a concern of ethnohistorians. Indeed, as far as Ghana is concerned, such a comparison was made by Bowdich, the first European visitor to Ashanti, in An Essay on the Superstitions, Customs and Arts, Common to the Ancient Egyptians, Abyssinians, and Ashantees ( 821). A hundred years later, the Rev. W. T. Balmer (I925) suggested a connexion between the peoples of what was then the Gold Coast with the ancient Niger kingdom of Ghana. A little later, Father Williams in his book Hebrewisms of West Africa (I930) again put forward the hypothesis of a migration of peoples from the Mediterranean (this time, Israel) to West Africa, and especially to Ashanti. The suggestion made by Balmer was accepted by Dr. Danquah and then developed to include a previous connexion with the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent (I944).

I am not at this point concerned with the question of a connexion between the present state of Ghana and the peoples of the Niger Bend, the Sahara, or the Near East, but rather with the type of comparative method used by the above writers to support their hypotheses. Fundamentally it is the same procedure as that employed by so many who have attempted to trace Mediterranean influences in the uttermost parts of the earth. It consists in searching for similarities of a cultural and linguistic nature between the society or region under discussion and an assumed source of origin, which almost invariably turns out to be some version of 'the ancient heliolithic culture which once flourished in the Mediterranean and the Ancient East' (Danquah, I952, p. 360).

In her latest volume Mrs. Meyerowitz makes little use of linguistic comparison. But her theory of the migration of the Akan depends upon such identifications, in particular that of the name Dia, said to be mentioned in certain migration stories of Ghanaian peoples, with various places, including a town on the upper Niger and the oasis of Djado west of Tibesti. The syllable dia (alternatively dja and again nia) is very common in a number of West African languages, and Mrs. Meyerowitz has only selected a small number of the possibilities available. One such name she selected is Gonja, which is in fact not Akan in any sense, but is the Hausa name for the people who call themselves NGbanya; Gonja she then interprets as Guan-dja, i.e. the Guan from Dia (195 2, p. 5 I) ! Why a people should refer to themselves by a foreign name is left unexplained. As Westermann has pointed out ( 922, p. I44) the termination dia or

dja is definitely Hausa; there is therefore no call to see in it a reference to migration from a particular town on the Niger Bend which, as I have already mentioned, has been ' read into ' the traditions of the Gonja. A less single-minded investigator than Mrs. Meyerowitz would be forced to grant that when the syllable dia, &c., occurred in place-names, there were other possible explanations than the one she exclusively adopts, even within the area where Akan languages are spoken. One such alternative was offered by Tauxier for the name Jaman, often given to the Brong state centred upon the town of Bondoukou (Tauxier, 1921, p. 80).

I do not, of course, wish to deny the use of all linguistic data for the reconstruction of past events. Material on the distribution of languages is most valuable. Indeed, it is a valid criticism of the ethnohistorical writings referred to above that they make little or no use of such data. To take Mrs. Meyerowitz's case, the distribution and linguistic relations of Akan languages gives no support to her main contention. These languages are placed by all authorities in the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo (or

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Western Sudanic) family; they therefore resemble the languages spoken throughout the forest belt of West Africa. To most ethnologists, the term Akan carries linguistic connotations; to Mrs. Meyerowitz it apparently does not, for she speaks of the Kumbu (i.e. Kong) kingdom as being an Akan state. There is no evidence that Akan languages were ever spoken in the Kong area. If we accept the assumption of a mass migration, then we must also account for the fact that the incoming peoples adopted the language of the forest tribes about whom we hear little or nothing. If the strangers adopted their language, there seems little reason to suppose that they could not also have adopted much of their culture. And yet the major hypothesis proposed by the author is that the culture of the Akan is not Negro-African but, ultimately, Egyptian.

Problems concerned with the distribution of languages are not discussed in any of Mrs. Meyerowitz's writings. Instead we are presented with ' evidence' based upon similarities of names for deities, tribes, and places. The late Dr. David Tait has shown how useful an examination of place-names can be in West Africa (Tait, 1955). But it is valuable only if carried out within a total linguistic context. By this I mean that one must consider the relationship of the languages now spoken, and one must base a comparison on more than isolated instances. The vocal organs are capable of only a limited range of sounds and some of these are likely to be similar in any given pair of languages, even on a purely random distribution. As Professor Tucker has recently reminded us, lexical comparisons can be regarded as satisfactory evidence of linguistic affinity only if they are truly' mass correspondences' (I957, p. 549). Linguistically untrained persons cannot afford to be less circumspect in this matter than the linguists themselves.

The search for linguistic similarities occurred mainly in Mrs. Meyerowitz's earlier volumes; in her latest the emphasis is on cultural likenesses, and specifically likenesses in magico-religious institutions. Here again the method has been employed by many diffusionists. But in this case the methodology is more solidly grounded. This is not to say that some of Mrs. Meyerowitz's tabulated comparisons between Carthaginian and Akan deities are not rather tenuous, while her account of North African history is in places marked by somewhat imaginative reinterpretations. One has only to compare her account of the marriage of Juba II to Cleopatra Selene (I958, p. 130 and footnote) with that in K. D. Mathews, Cities in the Sand (1957) to realize the sort of latitude she permits herself. Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly similarities between the institutions of the Akan and those of the Middle East, as Bowdich, Williams, Danquah, and others had already noted.

The diffusionist sees in these resemblances indications of the spread of cultural traits from one area to the other, even in the absence of other information. Moreover, the method of diffusion is usually assumed to be migration rather than contact in the course of trade or other modes of intercourse.

Theories of diffusion, whether by migration or other means, explain the existence of cultural similarities only when archaeological or other additional evidence is forth- coming. In the first place, such information is required to establish the direction of diffusion. In default of this, there is as much reason to suppose that' divine kingship ' travelled from West Africa to the Near East as vice versa; or 'totemism' from Ashanti to Carthage. Where such evidence is not available, it may well be that cultural similarities should be related to an underlying uniformity of culture. As Frankfort

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has insisted, supporting his point with some telling archaeological evidence,' resemblances between modern Africans and ancient Egyptians are not always emanations from Egypt' but can often be related to a common cultural substratum ( 948, p. 348).

Nor does this exhaust the possibilities. For example, the phenomenon of' divine

kingship ', and I use the concept in the undifferentiated Frazerian sense rather than with the more specific meaning given to it by Frankfort, has been explained in quite different terms by Professor Evans-Pritchard. 'Kingship everywhere and at all times ', he claims,' has been in some degree a sacred office. Rex est mixtapersona cum sacerdote.' An institution of this kind requires an explanation which applies to kingship in

general, not to certain selected states alone. And it is just such a sociological inter-

pretation that Evans-Pritchard offers: '. . . a king symbolizes a whole society and must not be identified with any part of it. He must be in the society and yet stand out- side it and this is only possible if his office is raised to a mystical plane. It is the kingship and not the king who is divine' (Evans-Pritchard, 1948, p. 36).

Totemism in its most general form has been the subject of similar hypotheses by Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown. These are but two of a large number of institutions, such as the levirate, matriliny, and polygamy, the distribution of which it would be most unwise to attempt to explain by diffusionist assumptions, except in some specific instances where positive evidence was available.

We may therefore conclude that while the comparison of customary behaviour is from one angle less hazardous for diffusionist reconstruction than the selection of

linguistic similarities in that undoubted and significant likenesses do exist, there may well be alternative and more cogent explanations for the presence of similar religious institutions (such as totemism) or similar systems of descent (such as matriliny) than diffusion by migration or other means from an assumed centre of origin. And these alternatives are too rarely considered by those engaged in ethnohistorical reconstructions.

Migration and rhe Akan

I have been concerned to discuss in some detail certain points raised by Mrs. Meyero- witz, because it appears to me that other writers have tended too readily to accept her suppositions for actuality. For example, Dr. Paul Hinderling treats the existence of the Kania kingdom as an established fact, while Professor Daryll Forde in an excellent

summary of the culture history of West Africa (I953) gives as much significance to the Kumbu (i.e. Kong) kingdom as Mrs. Meyerowitz herself suggests. But these are minor points compared with the recent assessment by Professor von Fiirer-Haimen- dorf in Current Anthropology, the latest supplement to Anthropology Today (Thomas, 1956). Haimendorf writes of Mrs. Meyerowitz's ' detailed historical account of an African people' which gives 'an integrated picture of the Akan State of the Gold Coast over nearly a thousand years, and proves how much can be achieved by a pains- taking, and at the same time imaginative, study of oral traditions supported by historical research of the more orthodox type'.

My own conclusion differs very considerably from that of Professor Haimendorf, both with regard to the methods and the hypotheses. One must recognize that the

study of regional ethnography is as specialized as the investigation of the historian's ' periods ', and it is sometimes difficult for a person who is not a specialist in the area

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concerned to judge claims based on a selective comparison of linguistic or other cultural items. Apart from the general limitations of the particular methods, I find Mrs. Meyerowitz's collection and employment of data, her own and other people's, to be seriously deficient in a number of specific instances which I myself can check. These deficiencies arise partly from an apparent neglect of relevant fields of study such as linguistics, social anthropology, and ethnography, and partly because they are the inevitable outcome of what, at this stage of research into the ethnography and

history of West Africa, is an over-ambitious project. It is important to place such works in their proper perspective for two reasons.

Firstly, the study of ethnohistory will be seriously handicapped unless its sponsors are more careful than in the present instance to sort out the grain from the chaff. And secondly, the new state of Ghana deserves better of its historians than this. Each new state demands its own history. Unfortunately too much of the writings about

Ghana, the 'Akan', and their 'prehistory' falls into the field of mythopoeic thought rather than of legitimate reconstruction. It is the job of scholarship to distinguish between the two.

I do not wish to imply by this that there have been no connexions between the

present state of Ghana and the medieval kingdom of the same name, even with North Africa and the Near East. There certainly have. But to interpret the Akan peoples in terms of a wholesale cultural diffusion or a mass migration from one place to the other is to disregard three basic facts. Firstly, that the Akan language is placed by all authorities among the languages spoken over the greater part of the forest belt of West Africa. Secondly, that the culture of the Akan-speaking peoples has never been

regarded by trained observers as being 'non-Negro'; indeed the religious institutions as described by Rattray, Busia, and others have many parallels among the inhabitants of other parts of Africa south of the Sahara. Thirdly, that their physical characteristics are not noticeably different from other forest-dwellers.'

Mrs. Meyerowitz's latest volume contains some excellent photographs, as well as some new material on cults in the north of Ashanti. But it is difficult to separate her accounts of religious activities from the developmental sequence within which she tries to place them. And as far as the ethnohistorical content of her work is concerned, we must disagree with the opinion expressed by Dr. Danquah and Professor Haimen- dorf. It sheds little light and considerable confusion upon that potentially fascinating aspect of West African ethnography, the connexions between the peoples of the forest

region and the empires of the Niger Bend, North Africa, and the Near East.

I In a paper published since this article was writ- east bringing the yam (Dioscerea latifolia), domesti- ten, Livingstone (I958) points out that the frequency cated in Nigeria, to the earlier hunting peoples of of the sickle cell gene among the Akan is similar to the area, who also spoke Kwa languages (p. 55 2). that found in Northern Nigeria. This would give The particular authorities on the Akan are not additional support to the thesis that the Akan-speak- mentioned, but I know of little evidence in any of ing peoples as a whole are not physically different them for such an eastward movement, though there from the other forest-dwellers of this region. Living- is some suggestion that certain elements among the stone assumes a totally different Akan migration Ga might have come from Nigeria. The fact that the from Mrs. Meyerowitz; he claims that'most authori- very detailed studies of Livingstone and Meyero- ties agree that the general direction of movement of witz make two quite opposed assumptions about these tribes [i.e. Akan, Ewe, Ga, and other Kwa- Akan migration, each of which is found to be in speakers] has been to the southwest' (p. 545). He then keeping with the authors' wider hypotheses, empha- links the high sickle cell frequency of southern Ghana sizes the need for caution in using material of this with a wave of Kwa-speaking immigrants from the kind.

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REFERENCES

BALMER, W. T. I925. A History of the Akan Peoples of the Gold Coast. London. BIOBAKU, S. 0. I955. ' Myths and Oral History '. Odd, No. I, Jan. BOWDICH, T. E. I821. An Essay on the Superstitions, Customs, and Arts, Common to the Ancient Egypfians,

Abyssinians, and Ashantees. Paris. BUSIA, K. A. I954. ' The Ashanti of the Gold Coast', in African Worlds, ed. D. Forde, London. CORNEVIN, R. I954. ' l1ments Guang au Togo et au Dahomey '. Encyclopedie mensuelle d'Outre-Mer. Paris. DANQUAH, J. B. I944. The Akan Doctrine of God. London.

I952. ' The Culture of the Akan '. Africa, vol. xxii, no. 4. DAPPER, 0. 1676. Description del'Afrique (French transl. 1686). Amsterdam. DAVITY, P. 1636. Description generale de l'Afrique (new ed. i66o). Paris. DELAFOSSE, M. 1912. Haut-Senegal-Niger. Paris. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 48. The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan. Cambridge. FORDE, D. 195 3. ' The Cultural Map of West Africa: successive adaptation to tropical forest and grassland'.

Trans. N.Y. Acad. Sci., vol. ii, no. I5. FRANKFORT, H. I948. Kingship and the Gods. Chicago. FREEMAN, R.A. 1898. Travels and Life in Ashanti andJaman. London. VON FURER-HAIMENDORF, C. I956. 'Culture History and Cultural Development'. Current Anthropology, ed.

W. L. Thomas. Chicago. GuINESS, J. C. I934. Adele and Adjati. (Unpublished MS.) HINDERLING, P. I952. ' Ein Beitrag zur Guang-Frage'. Korrespondenzblatt der geographisch-ethnologischen

Gesellschaft. Basel. LIVINGSTONE, F. B. I958. 'Anthropological Implications of Sickle Cell Gene Distribution in West Africa '

Amer. Anthrop., 60, 3. MATHEWS, K. D. 1957. Cities in the Sand. Philadelphia. MEYEROWITZ, E. L. R. 195 i. The Sacred State of the Akan. London.

I95 i. 'Concepts of the Soul among the Akan of the Gold Coast'. Africa, vol. xxi. I952. Akan Traditionsof Origin. London.

- 957. ' The Akan and Ghana'. Man, vol. lxvii. - 1958. The Akanof Ghana. London.

RATTRAY, R. S. 1923. The Ashanti. London. SIMON, MRS. B. A. 1829. The Hope of Israel; Presumptive Evidence that the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere

are Descendedfrom the Ten Missing Tribes of Israel. London. -- 1836. The Ten Tribes of Israel Historically Identified with the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere. London. TAIT, D. I955. ' History and Social Organization ', Transactions of the Ghana Historical Society. Achimota. TAUXIER, L. 1921. Le Noir de Bondoukou. Paris. TRANAKIDES, G. 1953. ' Observations on the History of some Gold Coast Peoples'. Transactions of the Ghana

Historical Society, vol. i, pt. ii. Achimota. TUCKER, A. N. 1957. ' Philology and Africa '. Bull. of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of

London, vol. xx. WARD, W. E. F. I948. A History of the Gold Coast. London. WESTERMANN, D. 1922. Die Sprache der Guang in Togo und auf der Goldktuste und finf andere Togosprachen.

Berlin. WILLIAMS, J. J. 1930. Hebrewisms of West Africa. London.

Resume

L'ETHNOHISTOIRE ET LES AKAN DE GHANA

MRS. MEYEROWITZ, dans son livre Les Akan de Ghana (The Akan of Ghana) fonde sa these

principale sur une analyse des 'croyances' antiques en quatre cultes-types - le culte de la

lune, celui de Venus, celui du soleil et celui de Ntoro. Elle donne ensuite un resume des

regnes des rois et des reines-meres du royaume Bono de I295 a 1740, derive de traditions

orales, et accordant a ces types de cultes un developpement suivi et meme une profondeur temporelle specifique. Le livre s'acheve avec la description des analogies des croyances et des coutumes akan avec celles d'Afrique du Nord libyenne, ceci a l'appui d'une affirmation,

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exposee precedemment, selon laquelle les fondateurs des etats akan etaient des Berberes libyens venant d'un oued lointain de la region du Tibesti au Sahara. Mais les traditions orales ne peuvent donner que des apercus limites des formes anciennes de la vie religieuse; Mrs. Meyerowitz, dans sa description des types de cultes qui, pense-t-elle, ont existe dans le passe, ne fait pas toujours une distinction tres nette entre les evenements anciens et leurs relations posterieures, et semble trop facilement accepter les renseignements d'un informateur comme une preuve satisfaisante des evenements du passd. II n'y a aucune preuve veritable que les cultes et les rites totemiques, decrits a l'appui de son hypothese, soient plus anciens que les autres; les descriptions de la religion ashanti par des observateurs specialises indi- quent maints paralleles avec les systemes magico-religieux d'autres peuples d'Afrique Occidentale. L'analyse de la religion akan par Mrs. Meyerowitz en termes de quatre types de culte se base principalement sur la reconstitution des migrations akan. Elle decrit trois royaumes, - Gonja, et deux autres, Kania et Kumba, inconnus, sous ces noms, a ceux qui etudient l'ethnologie de l'Afrique Occidentale; les preuves qu'elle donne de l'existence de Kania et de Kumba ne sont ni satisfaisantes ni convaincantes et sa reconstitution de l'histoire de Gonja est fondee sur des renseignements recueillis localement et mal compris. Depuis le debut du siecle, plusieurs ecrivains, citant a l'appui de leurs theories des ressemblances culturelles et linguistiques, avaient deja compare la culture et la civilisation akan a celles du Moyen-Orient antique. Il existe certainement des relations entre le Ghana actuel et le Royaume medieval du meme nom, et aussi avec l'Afrique du Nord et le Proche-Orient. Mais parler d'une diffusion culturelle totale ou d'une migration a grande echelle d'un endroit a un autre, c'est ignorer trois facteurs essentiels. Premierement, que la langue akan est definitivement placee par tous ceux qui font autorite en la matiere, parmi les langues parlees dans toute la region forestiere d'Afrique Occidentale; deuxiemement, que la culture des peuples de langue akan n'a jamais ete consideree, par les observateurs specialises, comme non-negroide; et troisiemement, que leurs caracteres physiques ne different pas d'une maniere appreciable de ceux des autres habitants de la foret.

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