Amma

Amma, the supreme creator god in the religion of the Dogon people of West Africa.

The notion of a creator god named Amma or Amen is not unique to the Dogon but can also be found in the religious traditions of other West African and North African groups. It may be reflected in the name Amazigb, which is applied collectively to the hunter cultural groups who preceded the 1st dynasty in ancient Egypt. Like other important Dogon cosmological keywords, the word amma carries with it more than one level of meaning in the Dogon language. From one perspective, it can refer to the god of the Dogon. But amma can also mean “to grasp, to hold firm, or to establish.” Among the Dogon, Amma is thought of as the god who holds the world firmly in both hands; to speak the name of Amma is to entreat Amma to continue to hold it.

Although commonly referred to as male, Amma is considered to symbolize both male and female principles and, as a result, is more properly characterized as genderless or as being of dual gender. This dual aspect of Amma’s character is consistent with the broader cosmological principles of duality and the pairing of opposites that are expressed symbolically in all facets of Dogon religion and culture. It is also consistent with the male and female aspects of biological reproduction that Amma symbolizes.

The Dogon religion is characterized as an esoteric tradition, one that involves both public and private aspects. Although Amma could be said to embody great creative potential, he is in fact considered by the knowledgeable Dogon priests to be small—so small as to be effectively hidden from view—although this detail of Amma’s character is generally not spoken of in public among the Dogon. This perceived smallness of Amma is consonant with the instrumental role that he is said to play in the mythological processes of the formation of matter and of biological reproduction.

Perhaps the first important creation of the Dogon god Amma was the unformed universe, a body that is said to have held all of the potential seeds or signs of future existence. The Dogon refer to this body as Amma’s Egg and characterize it as a conical, somewhat quadrangular structure with a rounded point and as filled with unrealized potentiality; its corners prefigure the four future cardinal points of the universe to come. According to Dogon myth, some undefined impulse caused this egg to open, allowing it to release a whirlwind that spun silently and scattered its contents in all directions, ultimately forming all of the spiraling galaxies of stars and planets. The Dogon compare these bodies to pellets of clay flung out into space. It was by a somewhat more complicated process that the Sun and the Moon were formed, one that the Dogon equate with the art of pottery. Consequently, the Dogon priests compare the Sun to a pot of clay that has been raised to a high heat.

Amma is also credited by the Dogon with having created life on Earth. According to the Dogon myths, there is a principle of twin births in the universe. However, it is said that Amma’s first attempt at intercourse with Earth failed, ultimately producing only a single creature—the jackal. This failure is seen by the Dogon as a breach of order in the universe, and the jackal therefore came to be associated with the concepts of disorder and the difficulties of Amma. Later, having overcome the difficulty, Amma’s divine seed successfully entered and fertilized the womb of Earth and eventually produced the primordial divine twins, the Nommo.