The Tale of Eze Eri: First of The Nzes

“This story is called Nze Isi, and it is about the first Nze and how the order of the Nze na Ozo came to be. In the beginning, the world was as it was, men only a little better than the beasts they tended—lacking in knowledge and blind to wisdom. This was after Nne Eke had died, her body exploding to birth the universe while Amadioha wept over her passing, his tears forming the seas. Amadioha did not want his wife to have died in vain, and so he decided to guide humanity to rise beyond the ways of beasts.”

“And so he sent a man full of divine knowledge to help, letting him down from the heavens with a rope. Ero landed on a giant anthill surrounded by water and Amadioha sent a blacksmith to heat the water away. Eventually, Ero communed with the people, took a wife and they bore children. Amadioha then sent heavenly fish to feed Ero and the kingdom he was building, teaching them the ways of the divine chi. But when Ero passed on, the fish stopped coming and the waters ran dry. His son, Nro, then took over, but he did not know how to reach the ancestors for wisdom or help. But he pleaded for an audience with Amadioha, and the universal mind revealed itself in a dream, asking Nro to sacrifice his two oldest children—his ada and his diokpala, female and male—for the promise of a bountiful harvest.”

“At first, he resisted, telling himself the cost was too great. But when famine continued to bring death to the people, he bent. The first ichi markings were cut into the faces of both son and daughter, and he beheaded them himself. Twelve days later, he found yams and coco yams sprouting from the earth where he had buried them. He ate the yams and slept—his first sound sleep in many days, plagued by doubts of whether he had gone mad or if Amadioha had deceived him.

“He was asked to share the yams and coco yams with all the people, but he refused. It had cost him too much to give them away.”

‘Anyi, are you still listening?’

Anyi’s chest rose and fell under the weight of sleep.

“Well, there’s yam everywhere in the land now, so I’m sure you know how that one ended. The first Nze had to unlock the truth that at our highest self, we live not for ourselves but for others—mmadu bu chi ibe ya—we are each other’s light. We also know this figure as Njorku Ji.”