66 Proceedinf/s of the Royal Irish Aoademij. 



In Northeni Nigeria, the Angass, according to Captain Foulke, have a 

 household god which they name Kum, who is spubolized by an upright slab 

 of stone called " Imkh," which is erected before the door of each hut. Kum 

 lives in this stone ; and he gets a portion of everything the man himself gets. 

 If the man goes to live elsewhere, he makes a mixture of flour, puts it inside 

 a pot, and attracts the spirit from the Stone into it, and thus he carries Kum 

 with him. Every man has a Kum by which he swears. The king's Kum is 

 called Tau; and this is also the Kum of the town. The Angass make 

 sacrifices of fowls, food, and the first of the new corn ground to meal to their 

 Kums. 



Symholism. — The egg is also a common symbol ; and we have already seen 

 that the bundu bush is planned in the form of an egg. Fowls' eggs are tabu 

 to certain families. The egg as a symbol is as old as the human race, and 

 signifies birth and nutrition, the mysterious beginning of life, the womb of 

 man, the Abode, the Place, the House, the Kingdom of Life, and hence the 

 symbol of Life and Life Eternal. As the emblem of the Universal Mother, 

 it was the sign of Tsis, Istar, Astarte, Venus and Aphrodite, the Begin- 

 ning and the End. Owing to the mysterious development of the life-germ 

 within the egg and its form, it became a symbol typifying regeneration and 

 re-incarnation. 



The idea of re-incarnation is curiously illustrated by a custom amongst the 

 Jollah. When a man dies, his brother's wives are called together ; squatting, 

 one takes the head of the corpse in her lap, and another the feet ; if there are 

 any more wives, they squat behind, with their arms round the waists of the 

 women holding the corpse, and, if possible, they should each touch it. The 

 deceased's brother then rolls an egg along the ground round his squatting 

 wives ; and it is believed that one of the women conceives of the spirit of the 

 deceased, which is re-incarnated in her child. 



The egg is the vehicle of life, and as such is associated with the ark and 

 the crescent moon ; the boat of the heavens, ^vhich is the sign of the 

 Virgin Mother goddess, Isis sometimes being represented with the horned 

 moon at her feet. Amongst the natives a common ornament, sometimes used 

 to contain powder or medicine, is two horns, mostly those of cattle or goats, 

 joined together at the base with leather in the shape of the crescent moon, 

 like the Cretan " Horns of Consecration." 



It is a far cry from Scandinavia to West Africa. Still there seems to be 

 a connecting link in the double-headed snake used in West African medicine 

 being found sculptured on pottery of the latter Bronze Age in the Museum 

 at Copenhagen, and apparently intended as a sun-symbol. But this is not 

 the only sign of serpent-worship ; signs are numerous everywhere, but hard 



