everything in the universe, but all of the ordinary
things that have to do with daily life, relationships,
land disputes, war, and death are left to the ances-
tors. Among the Serer, there are elaborate cere-
monies surrounding their relationship with their
clan and totemic ancestors. Names such as Faye,
Sar, Fall, Diagne, and Diouf are considered totemic
for the Serer.
The oral tradition of the Serer states that they
traveled from the Upper Nile to West Africa. One
of the reasons that Cheikh Anta Diop claimed that
the Serer were able to reject Islam, being one of
the few African groups in the West African Sahel
region to do so successfully, might be because of
their strong connection to their ancient religious
past. Scholars have long believed that the route of
the Serer from their ancient homeland in East
Africa can be traced by upright stones found
along the latitude they traveled from East to West,
from Ethiopia to the region of Sine-Saloum.
Linked to the religious beliefs of the Serer is
the fact that their ancestors came through
the Sudanese village of Tundi-Daro and erected
upright stones in the shape of a phallus and a
female organ. It is believed that this was an agrar-
ian practice that symbolized the ritual union of
the sky and Earth as a way to give birth to vege-
tation, their daughter. The vegetation from this
divine union was a cosmic trinity that harks back
to the African trinity of Ausar-Auset-Heru. Thus,
the ancestors to the Serer carved stones of two
sexual organs to invite the divinities to couple
and give them good harvests. It was the desire to
ensure material existence that drove humans to
this process of ritualizing the divine union.
The Serer people still retain the deity service to
the upright stones. At one time during the 14th
century, they planted pestles that were used as
altars for libations, calleddek-kur, by the Wolof
who have mixed with many of the Serer. Indeed,
the idea of dek-kur means anvil or receptacle. The
ancient town of Tundi-Daro means, in Wolof, the
hill of sexual union in a ritual sense, affirming
much of the Serer oral tradition.
What is more interesting in terms of the religion
of the Serer is that their burial rites were the same
as those of the ancient kings of Ghana and Egypt.
The deceased, after an elaborate ceremony, was
buried in luxury depending on what was available,
laid on a bed, and around him were placed all the
usual domestic and ordinary materials, tools, and
objects with which he was familiar during life and
maybe a rooster to awaken him. He may have been
mummified in the manner of Sunni Ali Ber, the
great king of Songhai, because mummification
seems to have remained only in the Angola region.
There are many linkages to other parts of
Africa, specifically ancient Kemet, in the religion
of Serer. It seems possible that the Serer found the
sacred city of Kaôn upon their arrival in Sine-
Saloum as a replica of the Egyptian city of the
same name. In addition, the name of the deity
Roog suggests Ra. Indeed, Roog was often
complemented by the national epithet, Sen.
Kemetologists have seen in the Serer name Sar, a
widely used Serer name, the idea of nobility,
because in ancient Kemet (Egypt), the termSa Ra
meant Son of God. A linguistic variant of this is
San, from the nobility of Sudan,as in the expres-
sion San-Kore, the area where the nobility and
intellectuals lived in Timbuktu.
Clearly, the Serer represent an African people
with an extensive religious history and fascinating
regard for human community as expressed in their
language. From their famous burial mounds,
tumuli, or pyramids to their intense philosophical
reflections on the nature of space and time,
human relationships, and the meaning of life, the
Serer are in the tradition of Africans who have
confronted their environment with numerous
questions and answers.Molefi Kete AsanteSee alsoAncestorsFurther Readings
Asante, M. K., & Nwadiora, E. (2007).Spear Masters:
Introduction to African Religion. Lanham, MD:
University Press of America.
Diop, C. A. (1987).Precolonial Black Africa. Westport,
CT: Lawrence Hill.SERPENT
African communities express a variety of views
about the serpent as an animal of mysterious and
complex characteristics and symbolisms. AmongSerpent 607