The Legend of the Moon Mask

Since the dawn of time, the moon has inspired myths and folktales, such as the legend of the Moon Mask.

There is an ancient African legend that tells of a day when a piece of the moon fell from the sky.

A simple man found it. Some say he was a goat-herd, some say he was a blacksmith. One account even says that he was a slave. Whoever this man was, he fashioned the fallen piece of the moon into a beautiful mask and, when he wore it, it would show him events before they happened.

Many versions of this ‘Moon Mask’ story are known across the African continent. In some, the man uses the mask to manipulate others and amass great wealth. In others, he uses it to accumulate power and authority. In some, the legend even say that the man used the mask to travel through time, to manipulate the future and to change the past so that, rather than growing up a goat-herd, blacksmith or slave, he became a great king, ruling over a vast empire.

Whatever the details, the overall theme of this story remains the same across the different groups and cultures that have retained it: the Moon Mask was so powerful that it corrupted even the most noble of men. Fearing its power, the gods themselves intervened.

Shattering the mask into several pieces, they scattered it across the earth so that no one man could ever again attain the power of the gods. 

Encounters with the Moon Mask

While I had spent time in Nigeria as a very young boy, I had been too young to remember much beyond the terrifying day my mother and sister were killed. Africa had, therefore, become a dark place for me; a land haunted by ghosts and monsters.

I had no desire to return.

When I was eight, however, my father made/forced/cajoled/practically-kidnapped me to accompany him on a trip to The Gambia. My sister and I were the first of the King family to have been born outside of Africa, and, especially in the fallout of the Lagos tragedy, he felt that it was vital for me to see, first hand, our family’s ancestral home.

He eased me into my return by spending a week at the Senegambia coastal resort, staying in a nice hotel, spending a couple of days on the beach and a few days exploring the tourist sites nearby. My first fond memory of Africa is of the day he took me to the nearby monkey park. Before long, I had stroked a living crocodile at Kachakaly Crocodile Park, canoed around the Mangroves of Lamin Lodge and been on a mini-safari just across the border in Senegal.

How cheaply I was bought!

Eventually leaving the Atlantic coast and the tourist hub behind, on our second week in the country we headed further inland. After six uncomfortable hours, bouncing around on the back of a battered old SUV belonging to a friend of my father, a man I knew only as E.B., we arrived at Wassu. The dusty landscape looked no different here than it had since leaving the capital, Banjul, and the village of Wassu, compared to the three-star hotel to which I had become accustomed (itself hardly the lap of luxury) seemed to eight-year-old me to be the backwater of the earth. Yet, I remember being surprised by the openness with which E.B.’s family welcomed my father and me.

Round and Round in Circles

The next day, a short jeep ride brought us to the outskirts of the village and face to face with the first of the eleven stone circles which litter the area.

These form part of the much larger Senegambian archaeological landscape, consisting of 17,000 separate monuments across 2,000 individual sites. Most of these sites, like Wassu, are stone circles constructed out of cylindrical or polygonal laterite pillars, although some blocks stand apart or in parallel rows. The tallest stone belongs to the Wassu circles and stands at 2.59 metres in height, and weighs over seven tonnes.

While several local traditions suggest that they are the burial places of ancient kings, the origin of the stone circles is, in fact, unclear and often debated by archaeologists.

Tenuous construction dates of between 750 and 1000 CE have been proposed, based mainly on the dating of associated archaeological material. This includes a handful of pottery sherds and human burials, along with grave goods including an iron bracelet and two spears, now on display at the #BritishMuseum.

An earlier construction date, however, has been proposed, suggesting that some of the stones were erected as far back as the third-century BCE., and some local beliefs say that they are even older than that.

Compared to my school trip to #Stonehenge, only a few months before, I must admit that I was initially underwhelmed.

Until my father regaled me with the folklore surrounding the ancient stones. Even now, locals believe that a curse will fall upon anyone who disturbs the ruins of the ancient kings supposedly entombed beneath them. Small stones and vegetables are still placed upon the pillars. Perhaps they are an offering to the ancients, perhaps they are a way of appeasing the curse. No one knows.

As I wandered around the ruins, now entranced by their beauty, listening to the rhythmic drumming of an entrepreneurial musician (who, of course, wanted a few Dalasi as payment), I found myself drawn to one particular tale that my father told me about them.

A story about what happened after the ancient gods had cast the Moon Mask asunder. A legend retained by only a handful of people who claim descent from the mythical Bouda people. A sequel, I guess you might say, to the Legend of the Moon Mask.

Ancient Gods, Lunar Mountains and Wear-hyenas, oh my!

The story that so enraptured me was the Origin Myth of the Bouda. My ancestors. 

Al’I’Dum, who becomes the great founder of the tribe, was a member of a persecuted lower caste within the kingdom in which he lived.

In a tale sharing remarkable similarities with Moses and his burning bush, Al’I’Dum sought shelter from his masters and enemies by hiding inside the Wassu Stone Circles. It was here that he encountered a god, far more ancient than that of the Christians, Muslims and Jews that had spread throughout Africa. It was one of the old gods, the archaic nature spirits who appeared to him in the form of a hyena. The hyena told Al’I’Dum to lead his people to freedom and seek shelter in the City of the Moon, at the foot of the Lunar Mountain. To aid in this task, he gave Al’I’Dum a single, broken piece of the original Moon Mask and told him it would grant him glimpses of the future.

The mythical Lunar Mountain is found in tales spanning Africa and beyond

So armed, Al’I’Dum prepared his people for their exodus. He waited for a day the mask had shown when their masters’ attention was turned towards an invading foreign army. Then, disguising themselves as hyenas (some accounts even say they transformed into hyenas), the Bouda escaped their masters and journeyed deep into the heart of Africa.

Their adventures across the African wilderness parallels many odysseys- encounters with monsters and savage cannibals, erupting volcanoes and raging rivers, etcetera, etcetera.

But, after undoubtedly embellished trials and tribulations, the Bouda arrived at the City of the Moon. According to yet another legend, the city is a wondrous place, built long ago by the Old Gods before they ‘ascended’ and left their corporeal forms behind. 

There, at the foot of the Lunar Mountain, they remained for countless generations, protected by their Oni, their Great King, who was descended from the line of Ali’I’Dum. The piece of the Moon Mask was fashioned into a new façade and worshipped as a sacred idol, its secrets revealed only to the Oni who used it to predict dangers to the Bouda and act pre-emptively to protect them.

Fact of Fiction?

Fiction, of course.

Most of this story stems from the oral traditions of a handful of my ancestors who still inhabit the Wassu area today. It is the only account of the Bouda, the legendary wear-hyenas, whose existence is found in stories spanning the continent and beyond into the Near East and even Greece, which does not portray them as the monsters of nightmare.

Like most folklore, there is little evidence for the tale’s grounding in reality.

Even in modern times, stone circles are sacred or even magical places for some people.

However, while the archaeology of the Wassu Stone Circles does not conform to the Bouda legend, it remains, nonetheless, a sacred place to those who draw their descent from the Bouda, much as Stonehenge remains a place of pilgrimage for many, even in light of science’s ‘proof’ against the romanticism that surrounds it. 

The only evidence that does exist outside of the folktale, however, takes the form of so-called ‘graffiti’ found on a single pillar, standing isolated half a kilometre to the east of the main array of stone circles.

This pillar is 2.13 metres in height and is cylindrical like many of the others.

However, unlike the others, protected from human interference due to fear of the curse, this one has been defaced with graffiti. This graffiti takes the form of paintings made in primarily red ochre (although with some notable use of yellow ochre), which uranium dating has revealed to be no more than four hundred years old.

The ‘Lonely Pillar’ at Wassu, The Gambia

But, while fully accepting that the graffiti is a much later addition, probably c. 1700-1800 CE, it shouldn’t be discounted as being applicable to studies of the stone circles’ origins and\or use.

The images are a jumble of overlapping shapes. However, extreme close-ups and digital manipulation reveal several interesting points that support the Bouda tradition:

1: a very European-looking ship is present, which I believe to be a transatlantic slave ship.

2: men and women are seemingly being herded towards the ship, supporting the above suggestion.

3: barely distinguishable without extreme digital manipulation is the image of a man, considerably larger than all the other figures and, therefore, most likely a man of importance and power. Analysis shows that, while this figure is also depicted in red ochre, trace elements of yellow ochre form a ‘swirling’ pattern around his head. Additionally, what some people have interpreted as a spear is more than likely a sword and it, too, has trace elements of yellow on it. That the figure is depicted next to a hyena is no mere coincidence.

A digital enhancement of the Wassu paintings reveal details such as the swirling mask over the king’s face.

While the mask-wearing figure might be a reference to Al’i’Dum, the founder of the ware-hyena Bouda tribe, I think that, when considered in association with the ‘Black Holocaust’ imagery, it is more probable that it is a depiction of the Bouda’s last Oni, the Great King under who’s watch the Moon Mask’s foresight failed.

The modern-day Bouda tribe, after all – incidentally a small group of no more than 200 people who are once again persecuted by the larger state-level entities that control the region – supposedly returned to the sacred stone circles following the destruction of the City of the Moon and the enslavement of most of the population at the hands of ‘white devils’.

What a Wonderful Story. Why are you telling it?

Other than the simple fact that stories exist to be told, there is one fundamental reason for relating this rather fanciful tale here.

Because, while magical masks, hyena-gods and time travel may be the result of centuries of poetic embellishment, I believe that, at the core of this fantasy, there is reality.

Truth.

You know how, sometimes, you struggle to remember what happened yesterday, who you spoke to, what you ate, what you watched on T.V., and yet a memory that is so distant remains fresh in your mind for years?

For me, that day at the Wassu Stone Circles falls into the latter category.

Even now, decades later, I can still hear the steady beat of the entrepreneurial drummer’s exact rhythm echo in my mind; I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my skin; I can still visualise the crimson rays of it flitting between the standing stones as it set, illuminating my father’s face in a soft ethereal glow.

A tear ran down his cheek.

“The Moon Mask is real,” I remember him saying.

His next words jolted me as though I had been struck by lightning.

“It is what your mum and sister died for.”