Snakes, People, and Spirits, Volume Two: Traditional Eastern Africa in its Broader Context

Product Description
This two-volume publication offers an in-depth analysis of ophidian symbolism in eastern Africa, all the while setting the topic within its regional and historical context: namely, the rest of Africa, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Greek world, ancient Palestine and Arabia, medieval and pre-Christian Europe, as well as ancient and contemporary India. Through the ages, most of those areas must have had connections with eastern Africa. No animal species has impressed mankind more than the snake. This was clearly borne out by traditional eastern Africa, the area to which this second volume is devoted. In this study, eastern Africa encompasses not only contemporary Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, but also Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, as well as peripheral areas belonging to central and southern Africa. This vast area is peopled by communities of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including Nilotes, Cushites, Semites, Bantus, and a few Khoisan-speaking groups. Ophidian symbolism was as pronounced, rampant, and far-reachingif not more soin that part of Africa as anywhere else on that continent and perhaps in past civilisations as well. Just as in the wider regional context, snakes were believed to be long-lived, closely connected with holes and caverns, trees and water, and life and death, and credited with a liking for milk. Eastern Africa showed various instances of phantasmagorical serpents and of sacred or mantic snakes. Snake-related witches, snake-charmers, snake-totems, and ophidian-like ritual leaders were very much part of the scene. Expectorating elders were assimilated to spitting ophidians. These features are shown here to be typically wide-ranging in eastern Africa and are examined in detail. The final chapters focus on a few communities of southern Abyssinia, notably the Oromo, an important group that has fascinated European travellers, missionaries, and social science specialists over a period of 150 years. The extremely rich Oromo ethnographic record lends itself to full-circle analysis. These chapters endeavour to make a significant contribution to the study of the prominent but mysterious Oromo, Konso, and Burji snake priests. Overall, these two volumes show that African snake symbolism broadly echoed the diverse representations of ancient civilisations.
About the Author
Robert Hazels interest in Africa grew in the late 1960s and the early 1970s while he was a volunteer in Rwanda. His PhD dissertation in anthropology (1984) dealt with East African age-set systems as institutions marking out successive and contrasting stages of virility. Having completed his training in anthropology, he resumed his career in international development, mostly with regard to Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1996, he reactivated his documentary study of East Africa and the Horn of Africa as a non-affiliated researcher. He has published several articles in both French and English, often with a focus on regional or comparative ethnology, in seven different periodicals between 1978 and 2006, as well as a book on infibulation in the Horn of Africa co-authored with a Somali scholar (2007). In 2008, he undertook research on ophidian symbolism in eastern Africa, a theme that had been initially explored in his doctoral dissertation.