Among the corpus of terracotta figurines discovered in the Greco-Egyptian city of Alexandria dating back to the 2nd century BC is a fine clay vessel in the form of a Nubian priestess of Isis of Philae, who is depicted in a kneeling position while performing a Greek-type mortuary wine libation.
This ancient vessel, which perfectly combines three cultural aspects of the cosmopolitan city, provides some of the earliest evidence for the participation of Nubian priests in the spread of Isiac religion across the Greek-speaking world.1
Vessel Shaped as a Nubian Priestess, first half of the 2nd century B.C. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
The Isis temple at Philae in southern Egypt where the priestess originated was located at the border region of ancient Kush and Ptolemaic Egypt, where rulers from both kingdoms constructed temples dedicated to the goddess —who was considered one of the principal gods of the pantheon of Kush and closely associated with royal power.
entryway to the temple of Isis at Philae in Lower Nubia (southern Egypt) image by Waj on Shutterstock
(left) A 26-line inscription on the Gate of Hadrian records the Nubian envoy Sasan’s participation in rites held on the island in A.D. 253. (right) A figure near the inscription may be intended to represent Sasan, Kush’s envoy to Rome. Image by Solange Ashby
In the centuries after the priestess figure was sculptured, Kushite envoys on their way to Rome stopped by the Isis temple at Philae where they engaged in religious ceremonies and left numerous inscriptions to the goddess, praying for success in their diplomatic missions to Rome.
The inclusion of several Nubian priests in Roman frescos depicting Isiac ceremonies in the Roman town of Herculaneum in Italy suggests that these African missionaries of Isis successfully reached the Roman heartland, and transplanted an African religious tradition to distant places beyond the continent.
(left) Panel painting from Herculaneum. ca. 1st century CE, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. no. 8924, depicting aithiopian (Nubian) priests as central figures in an Isiac ceremony. (right) 19th-century engraving by Robert von Spalart, reproducing the painting from Herculaneum depicting an Isiac ceremony.
While most Africans today primarily identify with the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam, several pockets of 'traditional religions' remain on the margins of the two dominant belief systems. Historical evidence indicates that although most of these traditional religions were confined to specific communities, some were successfully spread across multiple societies within the continent and beyond.
An example of this is the Bori religion of the Maguzawa Hausa; a social-political group that played a salient role in the development of the Hausa city-state of Kano in northern Nigeria since the late Middle Ages. Bori encompasses several polytheistic belief systems that combined older pre-Islamic Hausa religions with other practices such as spirit possession and masked dances.
In the early 19th century, Bori missionaries and adherents, both free and enslaved, carried their religious traditions to Burkina Faso, and northwards to the Ottoman province of Tunis. Despite its suppression by the Muslim elites and later by the Christian colonial authorities, the Bori religion continued to be practiced by some communities in Tunis during the 1950s and in northern Nigeria until the 21st century.2
The Maguzawa of Tunis performing a Bori religious ceremony, ca. 1914. image by Tremearne, A. J. N.
The geographic extent of some traditional African religions was therefore much larger during the pre-colonial period than their present geographic reach suggests.
This is best exemplified by the dynamic belief systems of West Africa's Atlantic coastal kingdoms, many of which recognized powerful serpent-deities that were shared across multiple societies since the late Middle Ages, before their religious traditions were spread across the Atlantic to Brazil, Haiti, and North America.
The history of these African deities and their spread across the Atlantic world is the subject of my latest Patreon article,
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Hellenizing Art in Ancient Nubia 300 B.C. - AD 250 and its Egyptian Models by László Török pg 58-59
Factors Contributing to the Survival of the Bori Cult in Northern Nigeria by Umar Habila Dadem Danfulani pg 416-417, Bori Religion in West Africa by Kari B. Henquinet