entertain the gods, who were present in their statues, observ-
ing all. In ancient Mesopotamia statues of gods were paraded
through cities and taken to watch entertainments. Although
the statues were stone, the gods could inhabit them to observe
and enjoy the spectacles.
Giving spiritual life to inanimate objects may seem
primitive, but most ancient peoples saw it as a sign of civilized
behavior. For instance, many ancient cultures substituted in-
animate objects for living ones in the confi dence that in the
otherworld of spirits or gods, the power of art and spoken
word would make the inanimate objects real. It is an uncom-
fortable fact that many ancient religions practiced human
sacrifi ce. If one studies ancient sculptures and paintings of
people being sacrifi ced, they look miserable and frightened.
In fact, for some religions, the fear and suff ering of victims
were important assurances of the eff ectiveness of the sacrifi ce,
whether the victims were girls in the Andes or children in
Burma. Th e Druidic cult involved bloodily torturing people
to death to foretell the future or please a god. Wars sometimes
were waged just to acquire prisoners for sacrifi ces, and those
prisoners knew only terror as they were killed. Th e substitu-
tion of statues for people as sacrifi ces was for some ancient
societies a sign that they had matured in their religions, that
they realized spirits made their own reality and would accept
symbols instead of living people because in their aspect of the
universe, symbol and reality were the same.
Another aspect of ancient religion that can make mod-
ern observers uncomfortable is the seeming lack of logic.
Th e modern world has been shaped and is constantly being
reshaped by the scientifi c method, but in the ancient world
few people approached learning via empirical research, that
is, actually observing how the natural world functioned. Th e
modern scientifi c method developed in the 1500s. On the ba-
sis of the logic of the scientifi c method, aspects of religion do
not make sense. An example cited frequently is the presenta-
tion of two stories of the creation of human beings in the Bi-
ble. If a person of today were to say to someone of the ancient
world—even one who was not Hebrew or Christian—that the
two stories in the Bible cannot both be true, the ancient might
consider such a person to be crazy. Did the authors of the Old
Testament sabotage their own work by including contradic-
tory stories? No. Th ey believed both stories to be part of the
truth. Th us it was that in ancient Egypt the gods Horus and
Seth were both brothers and uncle and nephew at the same
time, revealing part of the truth of their relationship and of
the supernatural world. In the complexities of contradictions
ancient people hoped to glimpse a little of what made the uni-
verse what it was in its wholeness.
AFRICA
BY ROBERT SHANAFELT
Religion can be diffi cult to defi ne. One defi nition is that re-
ligion is belief and practices concerning supernatural phe-
nomena of all sorts, from those about God to those relating
to various deities, spirit beings, and magical forces. A prob-
lem with this defi nition is that not everyone agrees about
what is supernatural. Another approach is to emphasize
special behavior in the form of prayer or other types of wor-
ship. Th is defi nition works well enough for situations where
worship is clearly separated from other activities, such as in
cases where people go into a special building like a mosque,
a temple, or a church to pray and listen to religious leaders.
But not everything that might be called religious is sepa-
rated out that way from ordinary life. Is someone being re-
ligious if they attend a wedding? Visit a grave site? Paint a
picture? Hope for a prosperous future? In these cases, the
answer can depend on the context and details. Th is is true
of much that is called traditional religion in Africa. What is
religious is determined by the context of the case because,
in much of Africa, religious life is a pervasive part of the
everyday world.
Another point to keep in mind when studying religions
with deep traditional roots, such as those in Africa, is that
ideas do not have to be written down to be part of a com-
plex system of religious thought. For example, Africa has a
rich set of traditions about cosmology, or the nature of the
universe. Th at is, there are rich oral accounts in various Afri-
can religions of how the universe, the world, human beings,
and other living things have been created and have developed
through time. Th ese sacred stories, commonly called myths
but better understood as oral scriptures, oft en run to hun-
dreds of pages when written down.
Examples of myths that can be traced to specifi c time
periods in the ancient past are diffi cult to come by, but some
hints of ancient western African images of the world are
given in epic songs. Especially relevant are those described
in the 19th century as being sung among the Soninke and
Fula peoples. Fragments of these songs seem to be traceable
to the fourth century c.e. Th ese songs tell of heroic contests
and mythic battles in ancient cities, with the legendary city of
Wagadu, most prominent. Th e heroes in these epics are wor-
thy of attention not only for their legendary deeds but also
because they are the ancestors of great lineages of peoples.
In the epics it is also signifi cant that Wagadu is presented
as a woman with extraordinary qualities. As such, she sym-
bolizes an ideal to be praised and honored. Wagadu, it is
said, “is not of stone, not of wood, not of earth. Wagadu is
the strength that lives in the hearts of men.” Epic accounts
also talk of a mythic serpent to whom the people of this city
made sacrifi ces. Some scholars have suggested that there are
connections to this story and archaeological fi ndings at the
ancient city of Jenne-jeno, near Djenné, Mali. In particular,
they point to serpent motifs on ceramics discovered there by
archaeologists. However, as with most things where evidence
is incomplete, much remains open to speculation.
Th e special acts of a religion are called its rituals. Rituals
are like habits in that they occur regularly, but they are more
than habits because they are imbued with special meaning.
Common rituals in Africa as in other parts of the world in-832 religion and cosmology: Africa