The ritual begins in the moon of kaanama (corresponding to the month of August–September in the Gregorian calendar) with the transfer of hoes that are ritually pure; they must be without blemish, they must never have touched the ground, and they must have handles of a prescribed type, fashioned from the wood of a tree whose name is derived from a cognate of the verb “to desire.These are hoes newly forged in Buberuka, north of the Nyabarongo; they are brought to the king by the Tsoobe ritualist, the principal ritualist of the kingdom, a man with a role especially prominent in the umuganura ceremony. His principal residence is in Bumbogo, the area where the sorghum is ritually cultivated, and he himself is considered a “ritual king” with a “royal” court. He, in his turn, also has a ritualist—the guardian of the ritual purity of the Tsoobe king. These ritualists of the Swere lineage (Ega clan) succeed under a series of three dynastic names (the significance of number symbolism will be discussed below); to simplify the presentation, they will here be referred to simply as“Muswere,” following their lineage identity.

The king and court therefore play a notably passive role in this episode; the initial phases of the ritual are concentrated on the area north of the Nyabarongo —the ritual area associated with Ecology. The hoes come from there (Buberuka) and return to there (Bumbogo), only passing through the hands of the king: he receives them from the Tsoobe and returns them to the same man with the words “Go cultivate that you may have productive harvests!” Tsoobe then gives them to Muswere, who in turn gives them to “anyone”—an unspecified person but not a member of the royal family or a ritualist. Thus the ritual begins with the mediating role of the king: it is the king who consecrates the hoes—a cultural element par excellence—and, having received them from Buberuka, proceeds to give them to a member of the society at large; they then return to the land north of the Nyabarongo for the cultivation of food crops. It will be noted that the mediating role of the king reflects—and is identified with—that of the hoes; it is also rein-forced by the double repetition of mediation (by Tsoobe and again by Muswere). The king’s role also provides an analogue to that of Society in this episode, for the hoes, having come from Buberuka, are returned to Bumbogo by the intermediary of an unidentified person, just as the king, having received them from Tsoobe, returns them to him.

But the analogy is stronger for the king’s classificatory role with technology, both by his direct contact with the hoes and by the reinforcement through the repetitive acts of Tsoobe and Muswere. The hoes and the king provide meaning to each other’s unique ritual status; the king would not be ritually consecrated without the hoes to consecrate, and the hoes would not be ritually significant (and hence would be unnoticed among the universe of profane items) without being consecrated by the king. In this ritual, therefore, the king’s role is more closely identified with the abstract aspects of Culture than with Society of which he is physically a part.Thus the structural features emphasize the classificatory roles being acted out in this ritual rather than specific material relationships.

Therefore, from the beginning, the king has been established as an intermediary between technology and society, on the one hand, and technology and ecology, on the other; intermediary, in other words, between Culture and the two pillars on which culture is based: human social groups and nature. Thus the primary axis of differentiation is that portrayed as the vertical dimension on the tri-angular schema in figure io.1, that between culture and its schematic opposites; the secondary differentiation is that portrayed by the two extremes of the horizontal axis, that between nature and society. The king also mediates, as do the hoes themselves (in both their production and their productive uses), between Nature and Society. (It might also be noted that there is less chance of ambiguity between the latter two than between culture and either society or nature; where there is less ambiguity, the schematic classifications need be less pronounced in order to preserve the triadic conceptual framework.)

The common schematic position shared by ecology and society relative to culture is illustrated in another conceptual dimension, expressed in a different medium, the creation myths. Here the kingship is seen as mediating between the “above” and the “below,” and between cultural elements on the one hand and society/nature on the other. Rwandan cosmology provides for the celestial origin of such things as fire and iron (and, illustrating the classificatory ambiguity be-tween culture and nature, certain food crops); the creation myths explicitly state that it was through the royal ancestors (or ancestors incorporated into the royal genealogy) that these cultural elements came to be known in Rwanda.

Once in Bumbogo, the hoes are greeted with the acclamations usually reserved for the king, thus once again reinforcing the identity—earlier reflected in their analogous mediating roles—of the king and the hoes. There are drums and acclamations and more: at the arrival of the hoes a new fire is kindled. This both recalls the association of fire with the arrival of the kings as portrayed in the creation myths, and reflects the specific ritual within the Code dedicated to the rekin-dling of the sacred fire of kingship at the beginning of each new dynastic cycle.” Firemaking also appears in other rituals and is specifically associated with the king —notably in the enthronization ritual. It is then left to the family of Muswere (during the moon of nzeri, September–October) to sow the sorghum two days in succession, after which cultivation takes place normally, by the whole population in Bumbogo. From then until the harvest, this area is virtually in quarantine —no one not resident of the area can enter Bumbogo, and the greatest precautions are taken to prevent any grain from leaving the area before the completion of the umuganura rituals. (Bourgeois adds that the initial cultivation takes place on a tiny plot of land, no more than one meter square, and is done at night, by Muswere and his own ritualist, of the Zigaaba clan.The former point, as an in-version of normal activities, has already been discussed above; the latter point reflects a later episode in the umuganura ritual, to be discussed below.)

In this case, then, the ritual Code introduces a tie of a specific social group, the Swere ritualists, as mediating between ecology and technology: the application of the hoes to the soil, or the transformation from sorghum seed to (eventually) food crops. In other words, the relationship that makes productive the application of technology to ecology is specific, not diffuse: it has to be applied action; it does not “just happen.”

The second episode is essentially concerned with the mediation between fertility and society: it follows the First Fruits of the sorghum from the ripening ear through presentation at the court to consumption by an unidentified Hutu member of society at large. Throughout this process of “plant becoming food,” the sorghum (and millet) represent fertil-ity, reproduction, and well-being: they are placed in contexts that reinforce these connotations. The intermediary role of the court and king is evident, but there is a secondary intermediary role of an interesting sort. As before, this is the role of technological elements—tools made by man. But in this case it is manifested in the number of containers (and huts) through which the sorghum passes on its journey toward becoming food. This aspect of Culture continues throughout the ritual sequence, where the movement through the sequential stages of a given episode is given ritual confirmation by the movement from container to container, containers sometimes fabricated of specified materials.

In the moon of mutarama (roughly corresponding to January–February), the first sorghum is mature. A sample is taken to the court, along with four grains of millet, in a basket made of bamboo with a pointed cover (ikangara). The four grains of millet represent the belief that historically sorghum was preceded by millet as the staple cereal crop of the kingdom. In some neighboring areas, millet is the sole ritual food cultivated specifically for these ceremonies, as apparently it was earlier in Rwanda.At the arrival of the sorghum/millet in Kambere (the principal quarters of the king for public audiences), the king leaves, as do all others not associated directly with the ritual. The king then returns and is seated —but not on the ritual stool, as specified in other contexts of the ritual. He touches the basket of sorghum, as does the queen mother, and the basket is then taken to another (unspecified) house, where the sorghum/millet mixture is ground. The meal from this—great precautions are taken to avoid dropping on the ground or profaning a single morsel—is placed in two baskets (icyibo) made of plaited reeds. Milk from a given herd is brought in two wooden milk pots made of the wood of an erythrene tree, a tree with very strong ritual connotations because of its brilliant red flowers and because its vegetation passes through four (a powerful ritual number) very distinct stages during the year. The sorghum and milk are then brought back to Kambere, where only the ritualists are per-mitted. The king looks at the sorghum meal four times (in this case, the verb used in the Code for “to look at” could also possibly mean “to taste,” a cognate verb); a specified wife (of the same clan, Ega, as the principal ritualist responsible for the cultivation of the sorghum) also looks at it four times.

The icyibo baskets are then placed in a large wooden pot of several quarts capacity (igicuba, usually used for drawing water), and this in turn is placed on a shelf over the royal bed, behind nyarushara, the principal iron regalium of the kingship and source of exceedingly strong ritual power. That night the king and his Ega wife have intercourse “in the presence” of the sorghum/millet mixture and the nyarushara insignia. This has been interpreted as an act intended to en-sure a productive sorghum harvest.It would seem to me, instead, that this is not intended as a one-way influence (either way) between human sexual fertility and agricultural productivity, but rather that the juxtaposition of the three acts/objects—the sorghum, the act of intercourse, and the nyarushara—all rep-resent a single classificatory category: they all reflect, and their mutual presence reinforces, the fertility and power of reproduction—of the land, of the people, of the kingdom; ecology, society, culture. Just before the drums signaling the new day are sounded, an unidentified member of society (but specified as “Hutu”) removes the sorghum meal from the igicuba pot and takes it out of the house, where he eats it at his ease.

Thus the new harvest, after passing through many intermediary stages involving baskets and pots, contacts with certain people, and juxtaposition with objects/acts of a similar classificatory nature, is finally fit to serve as food for society: the significance of a lack of any specific identification of the Hutu beneficiary is clear; it also recalls the creation myths wherein the royal ancestors brought down food crops (sorghum among them) for the people below. This then consecrates the new harvest, reflects its fertility and power in other domains, rein-forces the dietary staple of the kingdom (juxtaposing it with milk during part of the ceremony), and reconfirms the role of the king as intermediary and benefactor of society.

The principal themes then are clearly established before the beginning of the rituals most evident to the public. Those themes include the role of Culture mediating between Ecology and Society; the king mediating between both Ecology and Society; and the king mediating between both Ecology and Society at one level of involvement and between Culture and both Ecology and Society at another level. The next section develops these themes, and in so doing adds some new dimensions. The most important is that of movement: in this portion of the ritual, food and people are moved from place to place frequently and with powerful meaning. Furthermore, this displacement occurs at various levels: within Kambere, between houses and areas within the court, and through the wider ritual domain representing the larger kingdom. In addition, the intermediary roles of cultural elements are emphasized by the fact of their being more precisely defined, both in their use and their construction: certain containers are to be made of materials drawn from specific areas.

At the new moon of gashantare (February–March), the ritualist of the Swere lineage arrives at the court to ask for the igitenga, a basket of enormous dimensions (roughly ten feet wide by five feet high), so that in spite of the implications of the Code, it seems impossible for one man to have carried it alone on his head; more likely it was carried in a litter.

An unmarried woman of the Ega clan smears the inside of the igitenga basket with butter, a symbol of fertility in this and in other contexts throughout the royal rituals and more local rituals (e.g., marriage).This takes place at a specified section of the royal enclosure set aside for ritual performances; it is a local especially associated with drums. The basket (with butter inside) is then given to an unspecified Hutu, who takes it to the king, seated on the stool—the principal seat—with a sheepskin attached to it. The king then takes the basket by the top rim only and hands it to the Tsoobe ritualist, who “looks into it” (akakibanza mu mutwe: he places his head into it); the Swere ritualist does the same. The basket is then taken away by an unspecified Hutu.

The significant aspect of this episode, it seems to me, is the social anonymity of most actors, especially noticeable with regard to the king. This is reinforced by the king’s absence from the succeeding ritual episode; it is only much later in the course of the ritual that the king reappears. It is of particular significance that the king is seated on a sheepskin, which is a form of clothing prohibited to the monarc. Similarly, mutton or lamb is a disdained, almost tabooed, meat by Rwandan court norms. This aspect of the ritual is emphasized in the Code itself: a full six lines is devoted to the fact that it is a sheepskin, not a cow’s hide or leopard skin, on which the king is seated, despite the fact (continues the Code) that sheepskin has been prohibited him since the time “he was still a Tuutsi” (e.g before he was enthroned king: royal status elevates him above any particular social group iden-tity). Thus the king is placed in almost an aroyal role (or at least minimized royal role); his liminal status in this portion of the ritual emphasizes again his purely intermediary status throughout the ritual as a whole. The emphasis is on the basket, as the propitious recipient for the harvest, and as consecrated as such by the ritualists—the only specified actors aside from the king. Thus the basket could be seen as intermediary between nature and society in this episode. But from what follows, and from the reduced social emphasis in what precedes, it may be more useful to see this as a “marriage,” a union of the basket and the harvest, and thus as a statement of the complementarity of culture and nature.

Immediately on leaving the king’s house, the igitenga basket departs on its journey across the Nyabarongo—always carried by an unspecified Hutu—to Bumbogo, the area where the sorghum was cultivated.It thus mediates be-tween the two sacral domains of the kingdom (with the Nyabarongo dividing essentially the royal domain from the agricultural domain—and it achieves this differentiation, it might be noted, without actually defining the extent, or the limits, of either domain). Along the route the basket even travels by night— Bourgeois says that it travels only at night;the people line the path to greet the basket with great applause. Drums greet it in Bumbogo—there were no drumsat the central court ritual, and in fact they were explicitly proscribed—amid un-restrained joy and acclamations of the most enthusiastic nature.On arrival in Bumbogo, the basket is filled with new sorghum and the return trip is under-taken immediately, the same day, this time in the form of a conquest. As before, great acclamations accompany the progress of the igitenga, but this time there is more: the inhabitants of Bumbogo who accompany the igitenga/sorghum enter a period of institutionalized license (apparently for them alone?): the Code virtually requires of them to rob and beat those whom they meet en route, and steal—or expropriate, since they are acting in the capacity of “antiroyalty”—at will, and without reprisals.

They lodge at homes of ritually prescribed clans (two of the abasangwabutaka clans taken to be the original “owners of the land,” whose members fulfill a variety of ritual roles relative to the population as a whole); every night they are expected to receive “gifts of hospitality” (-zimaana; but in this case the term is used almost in the sense of “tribute”). They can even seize prestations destined for the chiefs or royal court without recourse on the part of those so despoiled. Again, on arrival at the court the basket/sorghum is greeted by drums—not the royal drums, but the ritual drums of the Tsoobe ritualist. The next morning the inhabitants of Bumbogo are presented with an ox—the quintessential “gift of hospitality”—and from there the emphasis of the ritual is on the introduction of the sorghum to the royal court.

One other aspect of this episode is worth mentioning as relevant to the pre-ceding analysis. The igitenga basket is said in the text to have been carried by a Hutu (singular). But given its dimensions, this is impossible; it is virtually in-conceivable that the basket when filled with grain could have been carried even on a litter. Hence, despite the note in La royauté sacrée, it seems more likely that the basket was transported empty to and from Bumbogo.This would certainly reinforce the idea of the symbolic role of the basket as intermediary between the two domains on either side of the Nyabarongo.

What follows is a very brief condensation of the procession from the Tsoobe enclosure to Kambere, the king’s house. In itself this section takes almost one-sixth of the ritual (sixty-two lines) and is clearly of considerable importance. The cortège includes the royal drums of the kingdom, butter placed in a clay pot of a prescribed type, with the pot placed on a support of special uncut grass (i.e., the grass is pulled out by hand); on arrival at the court, the butter is taken to the sacral portion of the enclosureand transferred to wooden pots of a prescribed type (igicuba). Included in the procession are two unmarried women, carried on hammocks, who play a role in the ritual and later become wives to the king.

As the drums arrive at the Tsoobe enclosure, where they meet the igitenga/ sorghum, the handles of the principal drum (Karinga) are intertwined with those of the igitenga basket, thus uniting the two domains: drums-igitenga/ sorghum; southern and northern ritual domains of the kingdom; power and authority; court and commoner. In addition, there are included two clay jars from Buhanga, the area of Rwanda associated with the memory of Gihanga, the culture hero and mythical founder of Rwanda (and putatively the ultimate ancestor of the kings): the sacral fire of the kingdom was supposed to be kept in a jar of this type. (Otherwise, there is no other mention of this aspect in this particular ritual, though it does relate to other rituals.) Two grinding stones also ac-company the procession.

As the procession arrives at the court, the Code gives rather explicit attention to the role of king as king in this instance, rather in contrast to the preceding section, even specifying at some length what he should have with him. Among these are a red necklace received at his enthronization and a ring made of fibers of a certain plant of prolific foliage that bears a white flower: it was a plant used as a charm to ensure the fertility of seeds as reflected in its role in this cere-mony.The king also wears a cloth made of banana fibers and a hare’s tail—also white, but more directly recalling the king’s solidarity with his generals, as also in the enthronization and burial ceremonies.

As the drums arrive, the king goes to them and beats out a special rhythm associated with the royal drums exclusively (igihubi). In this way he announces his active role in the ceremony—a role he has not assumed in previous episodes. It is at this point, therefore, that the royal focus of the ritual becomes dominant. The prominent role of the royal drums and of the king, the prescribed apparel recalling enthronization and other rituals where the king as a person is the cen-tral focus, the pots recalling Gihanga, the “dismissal” of the people of Bumbogo and the diminished role of Tsoobe/Muswere henceforth: all these serve to rein-state the royalty as the focus of the final stages of the ritual. But it is worth noting that such was not the case throughout the preceding aspects of the ritual. Though the emotional pitch may be highest in the succeeding episodes, the symbolic and structural significance is not limited to the drama at the court, nor confined to those episodes in which the king predominates.

The next section of the ritual is concerned with two complementary processes: that of integrating the sorghum into the royal court—in a sense the ritual emphasizes the change of focus from the Tsoobe (who himself has taken over from Muswere as the central actor) to the king; and that of the transformation of sorghum into food. There is thus evoked both a social and a cultural transformation (in the very restrictive senses in which these terms are used in this chapter)—the movement from Bumbogo to “central” Rwanda (“central” from the perspective of the court), and the transformation from plant to food. In both processes Ecology (Nature) becomes subordinated or transformed, or integrated into other domains, and hence in this instance the two aspects that we have (roughly) designated as Society and Technology/ Culture become identified, in a classificatory sense, by their common opposition to what we have termed Ecology. Though color symbolism is still present, numerical symbolism seems to become more important a symbolic form than color, or at least more apparent; it is possible that this shift relates to the focus on integration to the court, since numerical symbolism, as used here, has a more direct relationship to (or separation from) the royal court than color symbolism, which is more generalized.

As the igitenga / sorghum is introduced, the Tsoobe ritualist kneels on one side while the king is seated on the other; the Code refers to the former as “be-hind” the basket, the latter as “in front of” the basket. They “comb” the sorghum, a gesture involving four stalks of sorghum (with heads?), which they then place “upright” in the basket.The king and Tsoobe ritualist together transfer sorghum by hand to fill four small baskets (icyibo); the igitenga basket is then placed in the house, on a shelf (no regalia are supposed to touch the soil except in pre-scribed circumstances) just “in front of” the shelf with two grinding stones: in other words, once again the igitenga is in an intermediary position between the sorghum and the symbols of royalty (the kingdom); it is also a mediator since it here assumes an aspect of regalia (by its position and sacral aspect, having been smeared with butter) and yet is still a container of sorghum—it is literally “through the basket” that the sorghum arrives at the court. Sorghum-honey beer (explicitly of a reddish tint, as also recalled by its name, rugina, derived from the reddish earth of a termite hill, as will be noted below) is then presented to the king and Tsoobe. In addition to its color (reflecting the reddish color of sorghum grain, with which it is presented to the court), the identification of this beer with the sorghum First Fruits is demonstrated in two ways. It is made by the Swere ritualist and brought (or “tasted”) in a similar fashion to that in which the sorghum is consumed (including the presence of similar personnel, in the performance of similar gestures, and a prescription that the king be dressed in similar ritual regalia).The king and the Tsoobe ritualist each go through the ritual gesture of drinking beer four times; then the king (he alone) tastes it. The beer is then placed on the shelf before the bed, along with the iron regalium noted above.

The next scenes of the ritual have a slightly different character from the pre-ceding: the numeration system changes from four-based to three-based, and the king again appears in a ritual role of slight eclipse. The ceremony continues as an unidentified Hutu brings three blocks of clay, formed of the red earth from a ter-mite hill, and places them as three supports for a cooking pot. The king then “arrives” (although there was no mention of his having left) carrying two types of “soft” plants used in funerary rites; the explicit interpretation of their softness is that they represent the desire that the newly departed shades (in the funerary rites) will be “soft” in dealing with the profane.From the calabash containing these plants the king then pours water nine times before the jar resting on the clay supports; the same gesture is made by the queen mother, the wife of the king, the Tsoobe ritualist, and the Muswere. The number nine is associated in Rwanda as a sign of fertility, especially in nonroyal contexts (in the Ryangombe ceremony, the veneration of a spirit explicitly opposed to royalty, for example, or in marriage ceremonies); it also appears in certain royal rituals, but I would interpret these cases as eight-plus-one, not nine as such. It is always associated with the beginning of a new cycle in these rites, but the completed preceding cycle (in royal rituals) is still a multiple of four: in these contexts the “nine” indicates a break with the past, not the completion of a cycle.

A fire fed by a special kind of very hard wood (umurama) is then lit to the right (the ritually propitious side) of the jar, and the water is brought to a boil. The king then comes before the pot and kneels and claps his hands before it, ex-actly as one would show respect to a superior—exactly as one would greet the king. He is followed in this gesture, again, by the queen mother, the king’s wife, the Tsoobe ritualist, and the Swere ritualist: at this point, the Code says, the jar has become “favorable.”

The four baskets of ground sorghum flour are then brought in, and the king with his wife and the Tsoobe ritualist all add some of the flour to the water (four times, in a ritual gesture): the wife adds the rest alone. The king, his wife, and the Tsoobe ritualist all place the spatula in the pot together. When cooked, the gruel is placed again in the four icyibo baskets. While the gruel is cooking, however, the king, Tsoobe ritualist, and Muswere ritualist all go out and cultivate “solemnly.” They are subsequently joined by the inhabitants of Bumbogo who arrived with the sorghum. This cultivation reflects the earlier planting ceremony, performed at night and without the king, in Bumbogo. When the gruel has finished cooking, all cultivation stops, thus making a clear temporal identification with the initial and final stages of the process of transforming “nature” into “culture,” or plant into food. Also, by this action the king appears to have regained his ritual initiative—he participates first in all subsequent ritual acts, and the number sys-tem has returned to a four-based symbolism rather than a three-based system, which was associated (temporally at least) with the king’s apparent eclipse and subordination to the sorghum and ritual.

Milk is then brought from a given herd, carried in two milk pots fashioned from the wood of the erythrene tree, as had been done in the earlier ceremony of the moon of munanira. The king again adorns himself in the banana-fiber “pagnes des prémices” and the igihanda ring, made of a plant with white flow-ers, and is seated on the royal stool. Butter is brought, in a specified type of pot. The Tsoobe then comes in with gruel and kneels before the king; all this again emphasizes the newly regained preeminent role of the king. After having drunk twice of the milk, the king takes the gruel (in an icyibo basket) and touches it to the interior of the ididokombwa pot four times; he then drinks again of the milk. The queen mother does the same (with her own icyibo basket of gruel). The king’s wife does the same, but she uses the icyibo basket of the king. The Tsoobe and Muswere ritualists repeat the same gestures, each using his own icyibo basket. They then take out all the gruel.

The king and his wife then retire to the bed, where they have intercourse. One of the unmarried women participants in the ritual, a woman of the Tsoobe clan, stands in the doorway to acclaim them; no other Tsoobe can be present in the enclosure at this time, and in fact no other Tsoobe appears further in the ritual, which is, for all practical purposes, ended. The rest of the Code for this particular ritual is concerned with placing the pots and baskets in the sacral area of the enclosure and the tribute required of the chiefs—both for the court and for (as well as from) Bumbogo. It ends with a statement that calls to mind the joy (the celebrations continue day and night), the satisfaction (they drink in“long drafts”), and the reminder that this is, in fact, a public as well as an esoteric ceremony.

One strikingaspect of this ceremony to emerge from such an analysis concerns the role of the king. He appears explicitly in the Muganuro text less often than one would expect (given that this is a royal ritual central to the kingship), and his role through most of the ritual is not dominant: he is usually very explicitly a mediator (e.g., he touches the basket or looks at the sorghum). Finally, he often acts with others, not in sequence but simultaneously (usually with Tsoobe). This aspect might well, of course, be emphasized differently in the actual observation of the ritual performed, simply because of the dominant social role of the king in any gathering. But the Code as a text is clearly focused on the sorghum. The court is the place where much of the action occurs (and significant for that), but it is not the central focus of the ritual, in the wider sense, of which the king is only part. This would cast some question on the rather bold statement by Bourgeois:“It is therefore natural that the court should hold the preeminent role in the festivities surrounding the prémices of sorghum and millet for which the guardians of the tradition were located at Bumbogo.”

In conclusion, this ceremony can be seen as quite different from the conventional portrayal, whereby the king plays the central role of initiator and unique source of power, both ritual and political, for the kingdom. Nor is the king elevated above others. Instead, umuganura in Rwanda demonstrates the degree of participation in kingship shared by the ritualists drawn from commoner clans. In fact, it is their participation that creates kingship and strengthens the king. The ritual implies that the Rwandan mwami was far from being a “divine king,” if this term is understood as referring to a ruler above and beyond society, de-riving his powers from an extraterrestrial divine source and therefore owing no allegiance to the society over which he ruled. In fact, kingship seems more the creation of the conjunction, or the interrelationship, of forces of the world here below. The king’s role was the product of social participation. He was a relatively passive, relatively immobile personage in these rituals. His position outside society derived from the ambivalence of his role, which provided him a liminal status; he was an intermediary between several classificatory categories, and therefore unequivocally a member of none. In this sense he could not be seen in the ritual context of kingship as a full participant in society, but a liminal figure. He was a sacral figure, perhaps, but not a “divine king.”

It has been observed for other areas of Africa that the basic conception be-hind installation ceremonies of this type is summed up in the phrase “the king-ship captures the king.”** But kingship itself is not autonomous of the conceptual framework of a culture any more than it is autonomous of the social ligaments ofa culture. If kingship captures the king, then it is also clear that culture captures the kingship. As I have tried to demonstrate for these rituals, kingship is embedded within the conceptual universe shared by all elements of society. More than responding to questions of seizing kingship or exercising power, these rituals of kingship speak to more profound dimensions of social thought, for within this conceptual framework the meaning of kingship touched on—as kingship was in-deed a product of—the conjunction of important categories of the universe. King-ship mediated between them, but in so doing it reemphasized their separation, their differentiation. Consequently, the rites reaffirming the power of kingship also reaffirmed the essential nature of the universe itself. It was in this sense, not in the narrower Durkheimian sense, that society continually redefined kingship.

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https://uk.amateka.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/OrganicVeget.pnghttps://uk.amateka.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/OrganicVeget-150x150.pngBarataSocial & cultureThe ritual begins in the moon of kaanama (corresponding to the month of August–September in the Gregorian calendar) with the transfer of hoes that are ritually pure; they must be without blemish, they must never have touched the ground, and they must have handles of a prescribed type, fashioned...AMATEKA