Nyame

The Sky God

Domain: Creation, Sky & Destiny
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Light
Relics of Power: The Celestial Vault

Speak with Nyame

The full Codex

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.

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The People

People

African peoples

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Period

antiquity – present

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.

At a glance

Nyame (Onyame, Nyankopon) is the name of the Supreme Being, the Sky God, in the sources on the Akan and the Ashanti. Rattray, who gathered his material in Ashanti in the early 1920s, describes him as a remote god, remembered at household altars made of a forked branch rather than in images. The lesser gods, the abosom, would be his intermediaries. The anansesem tales show him as the original owner of the stories and as father of Night, Moon and Sun. The sources are ethnographic and linguistic works of the 19th and 20th centuries; no ancient written texts exist on this cult.

10 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The sky, the sun, the rain and the 'Gye Nyame'

Family

Nyame

Children

Esum (Night)Osrane (Moon)Owia (Sun)

Genealogy according to Rattray, Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (1930), contos sobre Noite, Lua e Sol; Rattray, Ashanti (1923), cap. XIV (rios como filhos de Nyame)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

R. S. Rattray, Ashanti. translation: Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923. read
R. S. Rattray, Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales. translation: Oxford University Press, 1930; texts in Twi with the author's translation. read
J. G. Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi). translation: Basel, Basel Mission, 1881. read

Studies

R. S. Rattray, Ashanti Proverbs (cited by Rattray in Ashanti, 1923, as a source of other proverbs about the Supreme Being; not consulted). Clarendon Press, 1916.

Name and epithets

In his 1881 dictionary Christaller records o-nyame with two senses: the sky, the visible vault in which sun, moon and stars are seen, and the Supreme Being, the Creator of all things.

In the ancient sources

Rattray, Ashanti, 1923 CE. Work by an officer of the Gold Coast Political Service, based on field research in Ashanti. Chapter XIII is devoted to Nyame as Supreme Being, with altars, priests, rites and proverbs.

The myths

Ananse buys the Sky God's stories. Kwaku Ananse, the Spider, goes to Nyankonpon, the Sky-god, to buy the god's stories.

Worship and archaeology

The most detailed part comes from Rattray (1923, ch. XIII). He discusses the opinion of Sir A. B. Ellis, for whom Nyankopon would be a god borrowed from Europeans, with no sacrifice or priests.

How the god was depicted

According to Rattray (1923, ch. XIII), there is no image of Nyame. The Supreme Being is remembered in the Nyame dua, the forked branch with basin, and in the neolithic stone axe called Nyame akuma, "God's axe".

What scholars debate

An African supreme god or an imported one?. Rattray (1923) reproduces Ellis's thesis: Nyankopon would be a deity borrowed from Europeans, without a cult of his own.

After antiquity

The anansesem tales, which take the Spider's name but are also called "the words of the Sky-god", kept Nyame in oral tradition.

Did you know?

Among the proverbs that Rattray quotes: "If you wish to tell anything to the Supreme Being, tell it to the winds" (Wope aka asem akyere Onyankopon a, ka kyere mframa).

Codex relic

The Celestial Vault. The sky itself under his dominion, from which he sends the rain, the sun and the fates of mankind.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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