construct. The plural would have been anyame,
which is nonadmissible in the Akan language. To
emphasize the Oneness of Nyame, the word
Onyameis more often used to represent the unique-
ness of God as the One and Only One.Nzame has
a number of spiritual properties that are expressed
in Nzame, Odomankoma, and Nyankopong. The
God of the Akans appears as a Trinity expressed as
Nzame, Odomankoma, and Nyankopong with the
following spiritual properties:
- All-seeing, All-knowing, All-powerful,
All-satisfying, majestic, All-brilliancy, and
many others that are unique to Nyame. - He is One In One and yet Many and spiritually
visible everywhere. - He is every Thing and hence He is All Things in
One and One Thing in All. - His Son is Onyankopong and His spirit is
Odomankoma. - He is Indivisible, Almighty, and Dependable
that is expressed in unity of the Trinity of
Nyame, Onyankopong, and Odomankoma. - He is boundless, Infinite, and giver of
inexhaustible aboundance. - He is the Giver of life and death to complete
His inexhaustible creative process through
the universal evolutions in accordance with
His All-powerfulness (Otumfo). Nzame is both
a forgiving and a punishing God.
The symbolic reminder of the Trinity, Unity of
Nyame in Akan ecclesiastics is represented as
Nyamedua (God’s Tree) that draws attention to
the underlying unity of universal creation whose
Beginning is the End and whose End is the
Beginning. Nyame as Creator of the Order in
which he lives cannot be created by any other
Being but his own Being. Thus, in the Akan belief
system, Nyame is self-created in the sense that He
owns all things. He is All-Thing and hence he
cannot be created outside all things that he owns.
Thus, God is everything and in everything. His
Order of creation contains life–death and forgive-
ness–punishment duality, which reminds us of the
African roots of duality, polarity, and contradic-
tion in cognition.
In the creational process, it is held in the Akan
belief system that Nyame created Osoro (Heaven)
and Asaase (Earth), which form part of his spiri-
tual system. Osoro is Osiris (Ausar) and Asaase is
Isis (Auset) as spiritual properties of Onyame.
Osoro (Osiris) is male and Asaase (Isis) is female.
The implication is that Nyame is composed of
male–female duality that constitutes the unity of
his creation and the evolution that he set forth
through the male–female creative process.
Residing in Otumfo (the All-powerful) is the male
and female characteristics that affirm hisAll-in-
All. These characteristics of Nyame and the Akan
belief system not only bear isomorphism with the
Egyptian theology; it is also claimed that the
Akans are the originators of the concept of One
God in Trinity with male–female duality in
ancient Egypt.
Humans as children of Nyame and Nyame as
the last of the ancestors by the method of reduc-
tionism is expressed in the Akan belief system as
All people are Onyame’s offspring,no one is the
offspring of Earth. Additionally, Onyankopong is
often addressed in prayers and invocations as
Opanyin or Nana (Grand Ancestor). The founda-
tion of the Akan Ancestral Tree is Nyame. All
Akan prayers or invocations start with
Twediampong, Odomankoma, Oboadee, Nana
Nyame...(i.e., All-powerful Nyankopong,
Odomankoma, the Infinite Creator, the Grand-
Ancestor Nyame...). The Otumfo (All-powerfulness
of) Nyame is expressed in many Akan maxims,
such asObi a Nyankopong ashira no no w obo ne
dua nye yiye(i.e., no human curse can have an
effect on anyone who has been blessed by
Nyankopong).
Etymological analysis of Nyame has produced
a number of related words. The concept of
Nyame is connected to the ancient Egyptian the-
ological system that defines Nyame as a deriva-
tive from God Amen (Nya-Ame), where Amen,
among many attributes, defines Satisfying God.
A special day has been set aside in the name of
Nyame, God Amen, for His reverence and wor-
ship. The day is Amen–Menda, shortened as
Menmeneda (God Amen’s Day or Nyame’s Day),
which is Saturday. Because he is a male in theNyame 465