Egungun is Harvest festival not visitation from the dead

The indigenous ancient Yoruba version that Egungun was a harvest festival is fundamentally different from the European version that Egungun was visitation from the dead. Despite the seemingly widespread acceptance of the European version of Egungun as a religious cult, the facts only support Egungun the harvest festival. The evidence is as follows: one, Egungun appears at the beginning of the harvest season in June as a general social spectacle; two, Egungun masquerades are a tiny fraction of the population sometimes just a handful in a town, and therefore could not be ancestors of millions; three, the Egungun is the same year in year out - same types, same numbers, same names, same costumes and same accompaniments.

Egungun is very easy to mistranslate for two reasons. First, Egungun has two different unrelated meanings depending on tonality. Egungun, the bone has the tonality of ‘re-re-re’ whilst Egungun, the harvest social event has the tonality of ‘re-mi-mi’. Second, the double ‘gun’ or ‘gun gun’ of Egungun, the bone, is different from ‘gun gun’ of Egungun, the social event. In Egungun, the bone, the ‘gun gun’ indicated ‘a collection of bones’ meaning a skeleton. In Egungun, the harvest social event, the ‘gun’ is a verb meaning ‘to thrill’ and the ‘gun gun’ made Egungun an agentive noun meaning ‘the thriller’. In other words, the Egungun festival had nothing whatsoever to do with the dead or with ancestors. It was simply a harvest festival (Odun Ikore).

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