Idemili

Also Known As: also written Idemmili; the goddess of the Idemili river in Anambra State, Nigeria, whose name is also carried by the Idemili North and Idemili South local government areas
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Igbo Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A female water deity who owns the markets, gives women industriousness and prosperity, and is attended by the royal python, which may not be harmed.
Role in Mythos: The ruling goddess of Nnobi and the surrounding river towns, whose shrine once served as the community’s court and whose cult shaped its titles, its politics and the standing of its women.
Relation to Humans: Her worshippers in Nnobi held that women received from her the gift of hard work and the pot of prosperity, and wealthy women could take titles in her name. Anyone who kills one of her pythons, even by accident, must bury it like a person or face her punishment.

A python is lying in a kitchen in Nnobi, coiled in the warm dark between the cooking pots. Nobody screams. Someone fetches a long bamboo pole, lifts the snake with care, carries it outside and sets it down facing away from the house, so that it will not find its way back. Then the cooking resumes. The snake belongs to the goddess, and the goddess is a neighbour.

She is Idemili, a river in southeastern Nigeria and the female deity who lives in it. The river runs through the Igbo towns of Anambra State, and its name now marks two local government areas on the map. Her name is popularly explained as a pillar of water, a gloss that circulates widely without a firm source behind it. Her greatest shrine stands at Nnobi, and the anthropologist Ifi Amadiume, herself from Nnobi, made her the centre of a landmark study, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, first published in 1987. Amadiume described the people of Nnobi revering their goddess as a water spirit, and found her religion woven into everything else they did.

The python is her messenger and attendant, called eke Idemili. In the towns along her river it is forbidden to kill one. The Nigerian writer Rudolf Okonkwo, who grew up in the area, has described what happens when someone does. The snake is wrapped in white cloth and laid in a small coffin, with offerings such as a chicken, a goat and kola nuts, and the person responsible must mourn it as if a relative had died. It does not matter whether the killing was an accident. Those who refuse the burial are said to find their stomach swelling, and in earlier times an offender could be thrown into the sacred grove, the evil forest where the community sent what it could not keep.

Her shrine was more than a place of prayer. In Amadiume’s account it served Nnobi as a court and a sanctuary. Thieves, adulterers and debtors were summoned there to answer for themselves, and the priests and titleholders of the goddess acted as police and judges. Some people were given to the shrine outright. Anyone other than the priest who entered it became osu, a person dedicated to the deity and cut off from ordinary society for good. The priest himself crossed a line of a different kind. He tied his wrapper as a woman did, and Amadiume called him a female man.

He did not rule alone. Next to the goddess in rank stood a woman, the senior holder of the Ekwe title, known as the Agba Ekwe, and in Amadiume’s reading she held more political power than anyone else in Nnobi. The priest consulted her. The goddess owned every market place, and she kept shrines in them, which made trade, largely the business of women, her territory. Women were believed to have received from Idemili two inheritances, idi uchu, the gift of perseverance and hard work, and ite uba, the pot of prosperity. A wealthy woman could take the ogbuefi title, open to anyone who had killed a cow for the goddess. Amadiume used all of this to argue that gender in old Nnobi was more flexible than missionaries or colonial officials ever imagined, with women able to stand as husbands and daughters able to stand as sons.

The missionaries did not like any of it. The early church in the area condemned the worship of Idemili as heathen, and a female god could not be fitted into a teaching built on a Father and a Son. Amenyedzi’s 2023 reading of Amadiume notes that even some academic writers of the period quietly turned the goddess into a male figure in their accounts. In the 1990s evangelical preachers in the area attacked the python customs again, blaming local misfortune on them.

The conflict is older than any of those preachers, at least in fiction. Chinua Achebe set it at the heart of his novel Arrow of God, published in 1964. In the story Ezidemili, the chief priest of Idemili, is the rival of Ezeulu, the priest of another god, and the royal python belongs to Idemili. When Ezeulu’s son Oduche, newly taught by the mission that the snake is just a snake, shuts a python inside his wooden box, it is not a prank. It is an attack on a god, and the news travels straight to her priest.

Where Idemili came from, nobody seems to record. No birth story or parentage is fixed in the tellings. She is simply there, as old as the river and the towns that grew up beside it.

Her powers follow from what she is. She is water, so she gives and takes away. She owns the markets, so prosperity runs through her, and through the women she favours. She judges, so wrongdoers were brought before her shrine, and she punishes, so a dead python left unburied is a sickness waiting to happen. Her limits are the limits of the people who keep her customs. Her python is protected only while the town agrees to protect it, and Okonkwo has reported that sightings fell when newcomers began hunting and eating the snakes. Some towns expelled the offenders. Others tried teaching them. The young people of his own town, he wrote, decided to leave the matter in the goddess’s hands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Idemili in Igbo religion?

Idemili is the goddess of the Idemili river in Anambra State, southeastern Nigeria. She is a female water deity whose greatest shrine is at Nnobi. The anthropologist Ifi Amadiume, in Male Daughters, Female Husbands (1987), described her as the centre of Nnobi’s religious, judicial and political life.

Why is it forbidden to kill a python in Idemili?

The royal python, called eke Idemili, is the messenger and attendant of the goddess Idemili. Anyone who kills one, even by accident, must bury it like a person, wrapped in white cloth in a small coffin with offerings, and must mourn it. Refusing is believed to bring punishment such as a swelling stomach.

What did Idemili give to women?

In Nnobi tradition, women were believed to have received from Idemili the gift of perseverance and hard work, called idi uchu, and the pot of prosperity, called ite uba. The goddess owned all the market places, and wealthy women could take the ogbuefi title by killing a cow in her honour.

Who served at the shrine of Idemili?

In Amadiume’s account of Nnobi, Idemili’s shrine was run by a male priest who tied his wrapper like a woman. He consulted the senior Ekwe-titled woman, the Agba Ekwe, who ranked next to the goddess and held great political power. The shrine also served as a court where thieves, adulterers and debtors were summoned.

Does Idemili appear in Chinua Achebe’s novels?

Yes. In Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God (1964), Ezidemili is the chief priest of Idemili and a rival of the priest Ezeulu. The royal python belongs to Idemili, and a crisis begins when Ezeulu’s Christian-taught son Oduche shuts a python inside his box.