5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.
These deities gather traditions of various Sub-Saharan African peoples, from the Bantu to the Akan and Dogon. Worshipped through ancestral rites, masks, and drums, they bind communities to the spirits of nature and the ancestors. Many of these beliefs remain alive both in Africa and in the religions of the diaspora.
Mask societies, such as those of the Dogon and Bambara, give body to the spirits in ceremonial dances. Initiation rites mark the passage to adulthood, and offerings of water, grain, and animals keep the bond with the ancestors and the spirits of nature.
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At a glance
Mbombo (also documented in the ethnographic literature as Bumba) is the primordial demiurge and creator deity in the cosmogony of the Kuba people (Bushoong subgroup), located at the confluence of the Kasai and Sankuru rivers, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the oral traditions recorded in the early twentieth century by anthropologist Emil Torday, before the beginning of time there existed only darkness and primordial waters, over which Mbombo hovered, an entity described as colossal in stature and fair in complexion. Shaken by violent stomach pains, Mbombo successively vomited up the Sun, the Moon, the stars and nine fundamental creatures, including the leopard, the crested eagle, the crocodile, the small fish, the tortoise, the lightning, the white heron, the scarab beetle and the goat, culminating in the emission of human beings. These primary creatures generated the remaining animals and insects of the earth, while the sons of Mbombo completed the fixing of vegetation and the burial of the arid sands. After driving the belligerent lightning into the firmament and teaching men the technique of extracting fire by friction of wood, Mbombo withdrew into the celestial sphere, leaving the sociopolitical and dynastic organization in the care of the civilizing hero Woot.
7 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research
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Sacred symbols
The sun, the moon, the primordial waters and the white giant
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Family
Mbombo
Children
Nyonye NganaChongandaChedi Bumba
Genealogy according to Emil Torday & T. A. Joyce (1910); Emil Torday (1911); Jan Vansina (1978); Harold Scheub (2000)
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Sources and further reading
Primary sources
Torday, Emil & Joyce, Thomas Athol, Notes ethnographiques sur les peuples communément appelés Bakuba, ainsi que sur les peuplades apparentées, les Bushongo. translation: Bruxelles: Annales du Musée du Congo Belge, Ethnographie, Anthropologie, Sér. 4, t. 2, fasc. 1, 1910. read
Vansina, Jan, The Children of Woot: A History of the Kuba Peoples. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. open
Scheub, Harold, A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker's Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. open
MacGaffey, Wyatt, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular. Paris: Éditions de l'EHESS / Indiana University Press, 2000. open
de Heusch, Luc, Essai sur la mythologie bantoue. Journal des Africanistes / OpenEdition Journals, 2014. open
Name and epithets
The theonym Mbombo (or Bumba) comes from the Bushoong language and relates to the Bantu linguistic root denoting to shape, swell, project or expel creation.
In the ancient sources
Notes ethnographiques sur les peuples communément appelés Bakuba, ainsi que sur les peuplades apparentées, les Bushongo, 1910.
The myths
The Cosmic Regurgitation of the Sun, the Stars and Living Beings. According to the cosmogonic myth recorded by Emil Torday among the Bushoong elders, at the beginning of time the earth was entirely without light, covere…
Worship and archaeology
Unlike the local nature spirits (ngesh) and the dynastic ancestors of the royal lineage, Mbombo received no continuous votive cult, and in the Kuba Kingdom he had no fixed temples, priestly brotherhoods, regular sacrifi…
How the god was depicted
In the sophisticated sculptural and textile production of the Kuba people, famous for royal memorial statues (ndop), carved wooden masks and embroidered raffia cloths, there are no anthropomorphic statues or sacred imag…
What scholars debate
Physiological Metaphor of Creation: Digestion versus Regurgitation. Structuralist anthropologists, especially Luc de Heusch in 'Le roi ivre' (1972), debated the meaning of the myth of creation by regurgitation in Centra…
After antiquity
In the history of comparative religion and in classic manuals of African mythology, such as the studies of Harold Scheub, Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, the cosmogony of Mbombo is often highlighted as one of the mos…
Did you know?
In the account compiled by Emil Torday, the white ants (termites) play a prominent ethical role in the cosmogony, being the only animals that perform a funeral and burial for the dead son of the creator deity.
Codex relic
Sun of the First Pain. The sun and the moon he expelled from his own body, giving rise to light and to all creation.
The rest of this scroll is sealed
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