Snakes, people, and spirits: traditional Eastern Africa in its broader context. - Volume 1

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.

This first volume deals with snakes as a zoological category, snake symbolism as perceived by encyclopaedists and psychologists, symbolisation as a basic cultural process, and ophidian symbolism as it occurred in ancient civilisations and on the traditional African scene in general. Like other forms of animal representation, ophidian symbolism has always been elaborated out of the key biological and ethological characteristics of snakes. Inevitably at work here, however, was the process of symbolisation, an ongoing process that plays a crucial role in the elaboration of cultural systems and the shaping of human experience. Volume One ends with an array of glimpses of ophidian symbolism recorded in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa aside from eastern Africa, thereby setting the scene for a more proximate baseline for comparison. In the works of encyclopaedists, in ancient Mesopotamia, and in western Africa, the constellation of meanings attributed to snakes is multifaceted and typically paradoxical. As underscored by a few scholars, the widely acknowledged assimilation of snakes to death and Evil is clearly unrepresentative, both historically and culturally.

Overall, these two volumes show that African snake symbolism broadly echoed the diverse representations of ancient civilisations.