Africa is enormous, and the diversity of peoples and complexities of cultures in sub-Saharan black Africa warn against generalizations, especially when discussing visual images, the significance of which is inextricably linked to local religious and aesthetic sensibilities. Hence, in order to understand the iconography of traditional African religions, one must use a comparative approach. Only by examining the religious iconography of a variety of cultures can one fully understand how visual images represent distinctive ways of experiencing the world for the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.

Ancestors and Kings: Two Case Studies

On the granary doors of the Dogon people of Mali, rows of paired ancestor figures called nommo stand watch over the precious millet stored within. Similar figures, at times androgynous, are placed next to the funeral pottery on ancestral shrines of families and on the shrine in the house of the hogon, the...