‹ AkanFrançais

Ananse and the Pot of Wisdom

Akan · moral fable

Ananse the spider once decided that all the wisdom in the world should belong to him alone. He traveled far and wide, gathering every scrap of wisdom he could find, and sealed it all inside a single gourd pot. To keep it safe from everyone else, he resolved to hide the pot at the very top of a tall tree.

He tied the pot to his front with a rope and began to climb, but with the pot pressed against his belly he could not grip the trunk properly, and he struggled and slipped with every attempt. His young son Ntikuma, watching from below, called out that the climb would go far easier if Ananse tied the pot to his back instead of his front.

At first Ananse dismissed his son's advice and tried again without success. Then he moved the pot onto his back and climbed to the branches. There he realized that his young son had shown him wisdom he had not gathered.

He cast the gourd away, and the wisdom scattered. People came to gather it; in this telling, those who arrived too late were left without it.

No one person holds all the wisdom in the world — not even the one who tries hardest to gather it.

An abridged retelling of a traditional story.

Source and version

R. S. Rattray, "Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), tale 3, pp. 4–7 (English pp. 5, 7). Abridged from the English rendering in this historical collection; not a translation of the complete Akan text. Read the source

Explore this idea

How Ananse Bought the Sky-God's Stories
Story
Long ago, all the stories belonged to Nyankonpon, the sky-god. Kwaku Ananse, the spider, asked to buy them. The price was Onini the python, the Mmoboro hornets, Osebo the leopard, and a Mmoatia, a forest spirit. Ananse agreed and also promised to give his mother Nsia to the sky-god. His wife Aso advised him on several of his tricks. Following her advice, he persuaded the python to lie along a palm branch to see which was longer, then tied him to it. Next he sprinkled water over the hornets and himself and covered his head with a plantain leaf. Pretending it was raining, he invited the hornets into his gourd for shelter, then closed it. Ananse dug a pit and caught the leopard. He pretended to help him climb out, then struck him on the head with a knife. He fetched a ladder and took the leopard out of the pit. For the forest spirit, Ananse made a wooden doll coated with sticky tree latex and set food beside it. When the spirit asked to eat, Ananse pulled a string to make the doll nod. After eating, the spirit thanked the doll, but it did not answer. The spirit struck it and became stuck. Ananse captured the spirit and brought it to the sky-god along with his mother Nsia. Nyankonpon acknowledged that Ananse had paid the price and gave him the stories. This telling explains how the sky-god's stories came to be known as Anansesem — spider stories.
Another telling of Ananse, the same trickster spider.
Only a wise person can solve a difficult problem.
Proverb
A hard problem needs a wise person, not a fool. The Akan saying pictures it as a knot of wisdom that only the wise can untie.
The story and the proverb make the same point from different angles: wisdom is not one person's to hold alone.

Other Akan stories

How Ananse Bought the Sky-God's Stories
Long ago, all the stories belonged to Nyankonpon, the sky-god. Kwaku Ananse, the spider, asked to buy them. The price was Onini the python, the Mmoboro hornets, Osebo the leopard, and a Mmoatia, a forest spirit. Ananse agreed and also promised to give his mother Nsia to the sky-god. His wife Aso advised him on several of his tricks. Following her advice, he persuaded the python to lie along a palm branch to see which was longer, then tied him to it. Next he sprinkled water over the hornets and himself and covered his head with a plantain leaf. Pretending it was raining, he invited the hornets into his gourd for shelter, then closed it. Ananse dug a pit and caught the leopard. He pretended to help him climb out, then struck him on the head with a knife. He fetched a ladder and took the leopard out of the pit. For the forest spirit, Ananse made a wooden doll coated with sticky tree latex and set food beside it. When the spirit asked to eat, Ananse pulled a string to make the doll nod. After eating, the spirit thanked the doll, but it did not answer. The spirit struck it and became stuck. Ananse captured the spirit and brought it to the sky-god along with his mother Nsia. Nyankonpon acknowledged that Ananse had paid the price and gave him the stories. This telling explains how the sky-god's stories came to be known as Anansesem — spider stories.
Why Ananse Has a Thin Waist
One day Ananse the spider heard that two villages were each holding a feast, on the same day. He wanted to eat at both, and he could not bear to miss the start of either one. So he made a plan. He tied a long rope around his middle and gave one end to each of his two sons. He sent one son to each village. "When the feast begins, pull the rope," he told them, "and I will know which way to go." Then he sat down halfway between the two villages to wait. But both feasts began at the same moment, and both sons pulled. Ananse was dragged one way and then the other, and could go to neither. The harder they pulled, the tighter the rope squeezed. By the time his sons came looking for him, both feasts were over, and the rope had pinched his middle thin. That is why, the story says, the spider has a thin waist: Ananse wanted both feasts at once, and tasted neither.
All storiesOpen in the app →