Queens

Queens are rulers or leaders who have been chosen, selected, appointed, or born into their roles. Queens appear in African history longer than anywhere else in the world. From the earliest of historical times, the idea of queenship has existed in the cultures of Africa; this idea appears to derive from the ancient concept of first ancestor, founding family, founding mother, or divine clan lineage. Among the prevailing ideas about queenship are that these royals are related to mediation between the ordinary and the divine; they are descended from divine rulers or they are infused with special supernatural power of divinity.

Therefore, the queen functions to protect the society from enemies and to bring order and balance to the cosmos. Among the Akan, when a queen mother dies, the people believe that the universe is chaotic until all of the rituals of burial have been completed. Such a spirit on its way to the distant “village” leaves not just social, but cosmic turbulence in the world, and this turbulence must subside before the community can continue as usual.

It should be clear that in many African societies the queen is not necessarily the wife of the king as in Western societies; she is a ruler or leader in her own right who has her own responsibilities. The main aim of the role, therefore, is to ensure that the conditions of harmony and balance are satisfied. Alongside all other responsibilities, the queen must ensure the proper running of the society. To this end, one of the principal roles of the queen in the Akan tradition is to select the new king. When Europeans first met African queens, they used the term Queen Mother to describe this leader who did not get her authority from being married to a king. Thus, the queen in African societies actually exercises power and responsibility.

Queens have exercised tremendous power in the history of Africa. Nubia has the most documented line of queens in the world. More women have ruled in Nubia than in any other country modern or ancient. Certainly, in the history of the world, few names of women leaders are any greater than those of Amanerensis and Amanishakheto. In Kernet, we have the names of queens such as Hatshepsut, Sobeknefru, Tiye, Nefertari, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra, the last during the rule of the Greeks.

In African societies, the queen carries significant ethical and spiritual power as the leader of ceremony and ritual. Often she is seen to have incredible, superhuman strength, ability, and wisdom. Because leadership comes with power, a queen may also create chaos by wielding power in a negative or malevolent manner. However, in Africa, the royals tend to be individuals who take their roles seriously because of the risk of violating the taboos of community. Teaching the royal family about the traditions of the society is one of the great challenges of the religious and spiritual leaders. A queen is responsible for order, but the order is not merely societal, but cosmic. One must be careful to maintain stability and welfare in the community by acting in the interest of the [Page 555]common good. Calamities, riots, wars, pestilence, disease, and bad fortune may descend on a community where the queen or king is irrational, violent, disobedient to the fundamental values of the society, or disrespectful of the ancestors. This is particularly true in those areas that are agrarian, where the weather and the resultant harvest depend on the queens. In communal life, the royal figure is the one gluon that holds everything and everyone together. It is a large and important responsibility for the royals to influence the harvest and the fertility of families, and therefore they must engage in the protection of their powers by ritual ceremonies to the ancestors.

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